Russian lawmakers address world over Ukrainian ‘terrorism’
The upper chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, on Tuesday placed the blame for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on Ukraine and its Western backers and called on legislatures in other countries to give their assessment of the incident
In an open letter to the “parliaments and peoples of the World” published on Thursday, the Russian senators condemned what they described as a “terrorist act by the Kiev regime.” The lawmakers pointed out that the rupture of the dam has led to a “major ecological catastrophe” along the path of the Dnieper River.
According to the document, Moscow warned the UN last October that the Ukrainian leadership might carry out “such a terrorist act.”
Officials cited as proof the repeated shelling of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant by Ukrainian forces in 2022. They went on to claim that the Ukrainian authorities had deliberately opened the floodgates at a similar facility upstream, thereby filling the Kakhovka reservoir to the brim.
The alleged Ukrainian act of sabotage was aided and abetted by Kiev’s Western backers, making the latter complicit, the letter insisted.
The Russian senators went on to accuse the West of launching a “disinformation campaign” aimed at shifting the blame for the dam's destruction to Moscow.
The letter called on parliaments of other countries to respond to “yet another crime of the Kiev regime” and do everything within their power to prevent further similar “acts of international terrorism.”
On Wednesday, commenting on the destruction of the dam, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine and its Western backers of gambling on a path of dangerous escalation.
The Russian leader described the incident as a “barbaric act.”
A day prior, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that the leadership in Kiev had targeted the power plant as reprisal for what he characterized as botched attempts at a counteroffensive.
Ukraine, for its part, insists that its forces could not have blown up the structure as the power plant was being held by the Russian military. Officials in Kiev also stressed that none of the missiles at their disposal could possibly have caused so much damage, particularly given that the Soviet-era dam was designed to withstand a nuclear strike.
The Kakhovka dam ruptured on Tuesday morning, causing deadly flooding in several towns and villages along the Dnieper River.
