International Criminal Court investigates Kakhovka HPP detonation

The International Criminal Court has started investigating the blow-up of the Kakhovka HPP dam, announced President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

ICC representatives visited the right bank of the flooded Kherson Oblast. International human rights defenders received a request for an investigation from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine on the disaster’s first day. The work has already begun, Zelenskyy added.

“It is significant that the representatives of international justice have seen the consequences of this Russian act of terrorism with their own eyes and heard for themselves that Russian terror continues. And it continues with the most cynical and brutal shelling of the flooded territory, the evacuation area…” Ukraine’s president emphasized. 

Kyiv will promote an independent and objective investigation as much as possible, Zelenskyy said. Ukrainian institutions and law enforcement agencies are involved in the process. ICC investigators gained full access to the affected areas, witnesses, information, and evidence. 

“The full and fair responsibility of Russian terrorists and the terrorist state itself is a prerequisite for the world to avoid repetitions of such evil,” Zelenskyy concluded.

Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka HPP on June 6. Almost 80 settlements in Kherson Oblast and Mykolaiv Oblast flooded, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine says. At least 10 people died, and 42 went missing, including 7 children. The station’s destruction caused a humanitarian disaster and ecocide.