Weaponising Water — Ukraine's Dams Are Targets in Putin's War

Apr 8, 2022 | Nicholas Hildyard and Josh Klemm
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In the early hours of 26 February 2022, Ukrainian air defences shot down a Russian missile reportedly heading for the Kyiv dam on the Dnieper River. Had the dam been breached, 1.2 cubic kilometres of water would have been unleashed as a maelstrom of diluvian destruction, flooding the entire left bank of Kyiv city, potentially destroying other dams downstream, washing away bridges and threatening the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.

The tit-for-tat accusations reflect the use of water as a weapon by Ukraine as well as Russia. 

The use of water as a weapon of war is not new. During War World II, as Nazi troops swept through Soviet-era Ukraine in August 1941, Josef Stalin's secret police blew up a hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper River in the city of Zaporizhzhya to slow the enemy's advance. In March 2017, the Pentagon bombed Syria's largest dam on Euphrates, Tabqa. The disaster was only averted by workers at the dam's hydropower plant risking their lives to prevent the dam from overflowing. Turkey has also used water as a weapon in its long-running conflict with the Kurds.

Observers are increasingly concerned that the use of water as a weapon will escalate as the war continues, with devastating consequences.