Global Courant
Amid the tainted farmland and destroyed crops, the waterlogged homes and shattered lives, the now-slow-motion tragedy that is the draining of the Kakhovka reservoir also peels back time on an almost forgotten aspect of Ukrainian history.
The receding waters have revealed the remains of an ancient settlement that people living nearby on the edge of the man-made lake call the “Cossack Meadow.”
Andriy Seletskiy, the mayor of Novovorontsovka – a town along the Dnipro River about 60 miles upstream from the destroyed Nova Kakhovka dam – considers the draining of the reservoir a milestone and an opportunity for the Kiev government to consider.
“In the Kakhovka Reservoir, we have more than 2,000 archaeological and historical objects,” Seletskiy told CBC News in an interview this week.
The discovery puzzles the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. It has devoted much of its political brand and province’s existence to preserving and strengthening Ukrainian culture and identity, including its history, which it has accused Russia of trying to erase with Moscow’s campaign of bombing of libraries and cultural centers.
Reconstruction of the dam is expected to take years
The desire to preserve the sites will have to be weighed against the urgent social and economic need to eventually rebuild the dam.
The Soviet-era power plant is an important source of energy for southern Ukraine. It is also the source of clean drinking water for 700,000 people, according to the United Nations, and is the lifeline for farmers in the region who depend on it to irrigate their crops.
“For Ukraine, we don’t need (such a) big reservoir. We need water. We need places for agriculture, but we also need our historical memory,” said Seletskiy, who studied history.
Andriy Seletskiy, the mayor of Novovorontsovka, sees the draining of the reservoir as a milestone and an opportunity that the government should consider because of its historical significance. (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)
When the dam was built in the 1950s, he said, it was intended to serve the wider Soviet Union, and the communist government cared little about preserving Ukrainian history.
“They just swamped these memories of ancient times and didn’t even take a picture of it,” Seletskiy said.
The “meadow” – with its mix of rolling hills, grassland and forests – was a safe haven for Cossacks for centuries before it was flooded.
Semi-nomadic and semi-militarized, the Cossacks have a long, rich – some would argue romanticized – place in history as a multi-ethnic, democratic people who were granted much autonomy under Polish, Lithuanian and Russian rulers. They were hired as irregular troops and developed a fierce reputation.
A senior official in Zelenskyy’s office said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian government plans to rebuild the shattered dam, but it will take years.
Rostyslav Shurma told local media that reconstruction will take place after the war — which began in February 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — is over.
Local residents sail boats through a flooded street in Kherson, Ukraine, on June 8 as they evacuate from a flooded area after the Nova Kakhovka dam was destroyed two days earlier. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)
“Kakhovka HPP is a hydroelectric power plant that was an important part of the energy system,” Shurma told an online publication, noting how Russia’s air and missile campaign has led to repeated blows to Ukraine’s energy grid.
Seletskiy said he recognized that the chances of persuading the Ukrainian government to keep the Cossack settlements were not in his favor.
“I understand that economics is higher than historical memory,” he said. “It’s sad, but I understand this.”
Communities along the Dnipro River are struggling
Those most affected by the loss of the dam have little time for historical memories.
South of Novovorontsovka, in the hard-hit city of Mykolaiv, people line up daily on a street corner with jugs and plastic barrels as blue city buses, equipped with a giant plastic bladder, hand out clean water. Early in the war, Russian bombing destroyed the water filtration system.
The destruction of the dam has only made the situation more miserable.
A woman fills a water jug at a mobile aid station in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. People line up daily with jugs and plastic barrels as city buses, equipped with a giant plastic bladder, hand out clean water. Early in the war, Russian bombing destroyed the water filtration system. (Murray Brewster/CBC)
“Please tell this to the world,” Larysa Dorhalis, a resident who frequented one of the corner distribution sites, told CBC News. “Tell them what is happening here in Ukraine.”
At the nearby train station in Mykolaiv, Alina Stasko has even less time to think about the past. She was driven from her home in a suburb of Kherson by flooding.
She escaped from the rising waters with her husband and their two friends, along with their cats, over a railway bridge as Russian troops fired on them on the opposite bank.
“We were walking and heard the whistle (of the grenade and) we fell into the bushes, then boom,” Stasko said. “And this accident wasn’t just one time… They were bombing heavily.”
With the help of volunteers, she and her family were transferred to a boarding school on the outskirts of Mykolaiv, which was converted into a center for internally displaced persons.
There, amidst the linoleum-tiled dormitories, she settled into Room No. 35 to sleep and meet an uncertain fate.
Alina Stasko, who was forced from her home in a suburb of Kherson by flooding, waits for a room in a displaced persons shelter in Mykolaiv that had been a boarding school. (Murray Brewster/CBC)
In the village of Hrushivka, northwest of Mykolaiv, Denys Myronenko also wonders about his fate. He owns a farm that grows strawberries and grapes and depends on the water from the reservoir.
“If we irrigate with just what nature gives us, it won’t grow,” he told CBC News on a rainy day this week. “Because now there is cool weather and rain here, but in summer the climate is very dry, it is very hot, and so (the harvest) will not be here at all.”
He said the word in local business was that “once the Russians were kicked out,” there was a plan to at least temporarily close the river and restore the reservoir.
“For now, while they (the Russians) are here – 20 kilometers away from us – the government doesn’t want to do this, because of course they can fire and there will be casualties,” Myronenko said. “We really love this water reservoir. It gives life. We all depend on this water.”
LOOK | Kherson residents clean up after Kakhovka dam breach
Kherson residents measure flood damage, clean up after Kakhovka dam breach
The war-weary Ukrainian city of Kherson is still dealing with massive flooding and damage more than a week after the collapse of a major dam. CBC News has a team on the ground that spoke to those struggling to pick up the pieces.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company, warned this week that all electricity consumers in the country will pay higher bills due to the destruction of the hydroelectric plant in Nova Kakhovka.
The nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which was under Russian occupation, depends on water from the reservoir.
Energoatom president Petro Kotin said it is working on alternative sources of water, but the absence of the hydroelectric plant, which was used to balance and compensate at times when the energy grid was under attack, will be sharply felt.
