June 6, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Michael McCaul, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said he believes Congress will pass more funding for Ukraine, despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s warning that more funding for the war must fall under the budget caps in the new debt ceiling law. 

Senate Republican critics of the law say Pentagon funding levels are insufficient and are calling on Congress to a pass a new separate spending package — known on Capitol Hill as a supplemental — to provide aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia. 

But McCarthy has thrown cold water on calls for a supplemental, and McCaul seemed to side with the speaker. 

McCaul also called on the US President Joe Biden's administration to provide more to Ukraine from funds Congress already appropriated.

The collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam is possibly the “most significant incident of damage to civilian infrastructure” since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

The dam is a lifeline in the region as a critical water source for millions of people in Kherson as well as Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, he said, and a key source of agricultural irrigation in southern Kherson and the Crimean peninsula – impacting farming and food production.

Griffiths added that a severe impact is expected in Russian-occupied areas where humanitarian agencies are still struggling to gain access.

The UN aid chief, speaking to the Security Council on Tuesday, also highlighted the danger fast-moving water poses to the risks of mine and explosive ordinance contamination, displacing the projectiles to areas previously assessed as safe.

Griffiths pointed out the impact the dam’s collapse will have on electricity generation and the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood accused Russia's war in Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic damage following the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam.

Wood, who is an alternate representative for special political affairs to the United Nations, stressed that although the US is "not certain" who is to blame for the collapse, that it was "yet another casualty in Russia's brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine." 

It is unclear what caused the dam to collapse in the late evening of Monday or early hours of Tuesday. Both Ukrainian and Russian officials said the dam collapsed in an explosion and are blaming each other for it.

Both Ukraine and Russia are blaming each other for the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam Tuesday as residents in the area rush to evacuate.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the collapse as “an environmental bomb of mass destruction” while the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was caused by an “act of sabotage” by Ukraine.

“For the sake of their own security, the world should now show that Russia will not get away with such terror," Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation Tuesday. He called on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to "involve international justice" and investigate what caused the collapse.

Only the “complete liberation of Ukrainian land from Russian occupiers… will guarantee that such acts of terrorism will not happen again,” he said.

It is not clear whether the dam was deliberately attacked or whether the breach was the result of structural failure. 

Ukraine is waiting for final agreements with its allies on the delivery of F-16 jets, President Volodymyr Zelensky told journalists on Tuesday.

A news release on the Ukrainian presidency’s website about the conversation said Zelensky had met the leaders of countries ready to provide Ukraine with F-16s on a recent trip to Moldova.

“Now we [Ukraine] still need a joint agreement with the United States,” the release said. 

The Biden administration gave its backing for Kyiv’s pilots to be trained on US-made F-16s at the G7 summit in Japan on May 19 and has signaled to allies — some of whom have a supply of the jets — it won’t block their export to Ukraine. 

Training on the F-16s has started in several EU countries, the bloc’s High Representative, Josep Borrell, told reporters last month. 

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said it is working closely with humanitarian partners to assist those impacted by flooding from the destroyed Nova Kakhovka dam.

She added that the agency has bought fuel vouchers for evacuation volunteers, that partners are assessing secondary disaster risks and that they have "been prepared throughout this crisis for potential displacements."

Jennings said that the “immediate priority needs include food and safe drinking water at evacuee reception points in Kherson city, as well as safe accommodations for those remaining in Kherson city.”

Ukrainian troops witnessed Russian soldiers being swept up in flood waters and fleeing the east bank of the Dnipro River after the collapse of the Nova Khakovka dam, an officer in Ukraine's armed forces said. Many Russian troops were killed or wounded in the chaos, according to the officer. 

Capt. Andrei Pidlisnyi said when the dam collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday morning “no one on the Russian side was able to get away. All the regiments the Russians had on that side were flooded.” 

Pidlisnyi told CNN he believed the Russians had deliberately attacked the dam to disrupt Ukrainian forces’ plans for an upcoming offensive. 

Pidlisnyi explained that the lie of the land around the river meant that Russia’s military — located on the east bank — suffered serious impacts in the dam’s breach. His unit was able to watch the events unfold through the use of drones and troops on the scene.

The Russian units in harm’s way may not have been warned, possibly to maintain the element of surprise, Pidlisnyi said.

Pointing blame: Ukraine’s government has echoed Pidlisnyi’s contention that Russia deliberately blew up the dam, while the Kremlin has said it was Kyiv’s forces that carried out an attack. 

In fact, evidence to conclusively support either side’s claim is yet to emerge, while analysis of videos of the dam, and its subsequent breach, and in particular examination of satellite imagery, suggest the collapse could have been the result of structural failure since the Russians occupied the dam in March last year.

Watch:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again blamed Moscow for the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam and said Russia should bear “criminal liability” for “ecocide."

"In our opinion, this is a crime, the Prosecutor General's Office has already registered it. It will have evidence. There is a modern classification — ecocide,” Zelensky said in an interview with national media on Tuesday.

Adding, "I think that there should be criminal liability... International institutions, including the International Criminal Court, should react."

Both Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of being behind the major breach of the dam, although it is not clear whether the dam was deliberately attacked or whether the collapse was the result of structural failure. 

Zelensky referred to a report by Ukrainian intelligence last year that claimed occupying Russian troops had mined the dam. 

Between 35 and 80 settlements were expected to be flooded due to the breach, he said, and his government was working to provide residents in flooded areas, and those neighboring it, with drinking water. 

In a tweet later on Tuesday, Zelensky said he had spoken to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, and that they had “discussed ways to minimize risks to #ZNPP [Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant] security,” which Grossi is due to visit next week. 

The ZNPP uses water from the dam at Nova Kakhovka to cool its nuclear reactors.

Residents downstream from the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River in Kherson were told to “do everything you can to save your life,” according to the head of Ukraine’s Kherson region military administration, as video showed a deluge of water gushing from a huge breach in the dam.

The critical dam is the largest reservoir in Ukraine in terms of volume. It’s the last of the cascade of six Soviet-era dams on the Dnipro River, a major waterway running through southeastern Ukraine. There are multiple towns and cities downstream, including Kherson, a city of some 300,000 people before Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor.

Here are some images showing the dam's damage and flooding in the area:

CNN's Cody McCloy contributed to this post.