Ukraine war

 

Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the

dam and there have been reports in the

media that U.S intelligence also points

the blame at Russia although no

information has been made public by the

US government on that now we have been

looking at satellite imaging to try and

get a better picture as to what happened

now this is from the 28th of May so

several days before that catastrophic

breach of the dam and we can just go in

a little bit here you can see the dam in

full working order it's all intact and

it's a hydroelectric Dam so you can see

some of the water coming away from the

turbines but that is on the 28th but

what is crucial is when we take you to

this image here now this is from the 4th

of June a couple of days before that

massive breach and what is significant

is what's in that red circle there and

you can see that actually the dam was

already damaged in some way you can see

bits of it there two days before that

catastrophic breach and if we just bring

you over to this final satellite image

this is from the 6th of June and you can

see there just how badly damaged it

ended up being

completely destroyed in the middle and

the water gushing through and of course

as we've seen from my colleague James

Waterhouse we've seen the impact of that

on the ground but what these two images

tell us is that something happened on

the 4th of June now either something

happened on the 4th of June that led to

then what happened on the six or perhaps

there were two separate incidents now we

don't have underwater images nor does

anyone to say what happened beneath the

water here but we do know therefore that

two things may have happened or one

thing may have led to another .

now on the

other hand you have the Russians Matthew

saying that Ukraine had a direct missile

attack on the dam we know that in the

last few months there have been some

strikes on the dam it was hit in August

and November of last year but

significantly none of that caused any

huge damage like what we have seen here

we know that the dam was control by

Russia we know that it was on the front

lines other experts that we've been

speaking to also say that wear and tear

will have played a factor it wasn't a

very well maintained Dam by the Russians

it had a lot of pressure on it the water

was higher than it should have been it

was on the highest levels for a number

of years and so there are a lot of

factors that that are at play but for

now we continue to investigate.