Kakhovka dam collapse has made Black Sea a "garbage dump and animal cemetery," Ukraine warns

An aerial view shows a flooded area in Kherson on Saturday. Inna Varenytsia/Reuters

Floodwaters are receding following the collapse of the Kakhovka dam, but debris washed along the Dnipro river is turning Odesa’s Black Sea coastline into “a garbage dump and animal cemetery,” according to Ukrainian authorities.

“A lot of mines, ammunition and other explosive objects are being carried into the sea and thrown onto the shoreline,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said on its website at the weekend, adding that border guards had observed a “plague of fish” in the area.

“The Dnipro river flows into the Black Sea, bearing many signs of the devastation caused by Russians,” the ministry said.

“The consequences of ecocide are terrible,” it added.

The collapse of the dam in southern Ukraine on June 6 is one of the biggest industrial and ecological disasters in Europe for decades.

The catastrophe has destroyed entire villages, flooded farmland, deprived tens of thousands of people of power and clean water, and caused massive environmental damage.

But it’s still impossible to say whether it collapsed because it was deliberately targeted as part of Russia’s war in Ukraine or whether the breach could have been caused by structural failure.

Several Western officials have blamed the collapse of the Russian-occupied dam on Moscow.