US Not Sure If Russia Responsible for Ukraine Dam Explosion

The White House says it "cannot say conclusively what happened" to cause a major dam in southern Ukraine to collapse, flooding villages, endangering crops in the country’s breadbasket and threatening drinking water supplies.

Speaking at the White House briefing Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the administration has "seen the reports that Russia was responsible" for an explosion at the dam.

He said the White House is "doing the best we can to assess those reports, and we are working with the Ukrainians to gather more information."

Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station, on the Dnieper River in an area that Moscow has controlled for more than a year, while Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombardment in the contested area. It was not possible to reconcile the conflicting claims.

Russian and Ukrainian officials used terms like “ecological disaster” and “terrorist act” to describe the torrent of water gushing through the broken dam and beginning to empty an upstream reservoir that is one of the world's largest.

Kirby said whoever was responsible, "what is clear and what we absolutely can say is that the damage to the Ukrainian people and to the region will be significant."

He declined to say what impact the U.S. believes it would have on Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

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