He added that the US had enough funds to support Ukraine on the battlefield for the rest of the fiscal year. John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, said the US was assessing claims Russia was behind the dam burst but could not not say “conclusively” who was responsible. Josep Borrell, the EU’s top foreign diplomat, condemned the attack in the “strongest terms possible”, adding: “The destruction of the Kakhovka dam represents a new dimension of Russian atrocities, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk.” Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, said: “Russia will have to pay for the war crimes committed in Ukraine.” The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, around 150km upstream, also used water from it to cool its reactors.
The Nova Kakhovka dam and its hydro-electric power plant powered three million homes. Russia blamed Ukraine for the destruction of the dam, terming it an act of “sabotage” that endangered water supplies to Russian-controlled Crimea. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, accused Moscow of carrying out the strike “to stop the Ukrainian offensive”. James Cleverly, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, suggested that Russia was behind the “abhorrent act”, saying “intentionally attacking exclusively civilian infrastructure is a war crime”. US intelligence was “leaning” to the conclusion that Russia had triggered the flood, NBC news reported on Tuesday evening. We’ve seen previous instances of that in the conflict so far. “Attacks on civilian infrastructure are appalling and wrong. “But what I can say is if it is intentional it would represent the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war, and would demonstrate the new lows we have seen from Russian aggression. Speaking on Tuesday night, Mr Sunak said: “Our military and intelligence agencies are currently looking at it so it’s too soon to preempt that and make a definitive judgement.
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