One of Ukraine’s worst ecological disasters in recent years is now the site of a remarkable natural transformation, according to ecologists.
The Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnieper River in Ukraine’s Kherson region spilled into dozens of villages, causing widespread flooding and scores of deaths on June 6, 2023, as the result of explosions atop a crucial dam.
Investigations have concluded that Russian troops likely placed the explosives, causing flooding to hinder a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive to the Russian invasion, although the Kremlin denies the charge.
Two years after the disaster, despite the vast damage to downstream areas, especially farmland, the ground that once stood under 4.5 meters of water is showing signs of rapid transformation into willow and poplar woods, according to Mykhaylo Mulenko of the Khortytsia National Reserve, which oversees the area.
“Where I'm standing was underwater,” Mulenko recently told RFE/RL as he walked through a dense thicket of saplings growing over his head. “Here everything happens naturally and is overgrown with those plants that were characteristic of this territory.”
Nearby, water lilies have been growing despite a lack of water, he added.
“The forest is actually very dense. If you go deep into these thickets, you get lost -- it’s really hard to keep your sense of direction.”
Flora and fauna have both been returning to the site, he said.
The dam was a critical hydroelectric power source before it burst, resulting in pollution and contamination of water sources that was so extensive Kyiv accused the Kremlin of “ecocide.”
Thousands of fish were destroyed, natural habitats ruined, and hundreds of homes were inundated.
Now cranes, herons, deer, boars, badgers, and more than 100 rare species have been sighted in the former flood zone.
“Poplars, willow trees, a naturally regenerated floodplain forest is forming, gradually replacing the territory of the Kakhovka Reservoir,” said Mulenko.
The increase in biodiversity is remarkable, he added.
“In 2023, after the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam was blown up, we observed about 40 species of plants here. At the end of last year there were about 140.”
The site has witnessed more than one epic disaster: The Kakhovka dam was originally built in 1956, raising the natural level of the Dnieper River by 16 meters, flooding an area historically marked by dense forest called the Great Meadow and creating the Kakhovka Reservoir.
It formed the second-largest reservoir in Ukraine by area and the largest by water volume.
An earlier dam on the Dnieper was breached twice during World War II, once in August 1941, when the Soviet NKVD blew it up to hinder the Nazi advance, killing between 3,000 and 100,000 Soviet civilians, as well as Soviet troops.
In 1943, it was blown up again, this time by retreating German troops.
Russian forces seized the Kakhovka dam in February 2022 in the early days of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia attacked Ukrainian infrastructure that year, damaging several other dams and leaving many Ukrainians without access to water.
Now, although nature has indeed rebounded, the damage from 2023 remains extensive.
A report by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe lays out the case for holding Russia responsible for the destruction: “It is clear that the havoc wrought by Russia’s actions will endure for decades and that Ukraine will require both international and intergenerational support to adequately address it.”
