Anastasia Pechenyuk21:52, 06/10/23

The UN requested access to cross the front line to provide assistance to residents of the occupied territories as early as Wednesday, June 7th.

UN Deputy Secretary General Martin Griffiths said that Russia did not provide representatives of the organization with the opportunity to help residents of the occupied Left Bank of the Kherson region, who suffered from the Russian terrorist attack on the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station.

Griffiths, in an interview with AP , said that on Wednesday, June 7, he met with Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzey to ask the Russian authorities to provide the organization’s teams with access to the occupied territory in order to be able to help Ukrainians in the occupied regions.

“During the conversation, we provided them with details to enable Moscow to make a decision, which we hope will be positive. I hope this will happen,” he said.

Griffiths said that in the territory controlled by Ukraine, the UN was able to reach about 30,000 people with assistance. The organization is also likely to issue a special appeal for additional funds to be provided to Ukraine to deal with the consequences of the dam failure. At the same time, according to Griffiths, this will be discussed in a few weeks, when the consequences for the economy, environment and public health of the affected regions become more clear.

UN reaction to the Russian terrorist attack on the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station 

On the night of June 6, the Russian invaders blew up the previously mined dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, as a result of which dozens of settlements in southern Ukraine were flooded. The Office of the Prosecutor General warned that more than 40,000 people would need to be evacuated, 25 of them on the Left Bank of the Kherson region occupied by Russian invaders. 

The Ukrainian authorities reported that the occupiers were not dealing with the issue of evacuating the Ukrainian population. Subsequently, it became known that the occupiers were killing those who were trying to evacuate. 

On June 7, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that the government had appealed to the leadership of the UN, the Red Cross and other international humanitarian organizations with an appeal to support the operation to rescue Ukrainians in the territories occupied by Russia. On the same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with BILD that he was shocked by the lack of response from the UN and other organizations.

A few hours after the explosion of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, the UN congratulated everyone on social networks on the International Day of the Russian Language. Only in the afternoon of Thursday, June 8, the UN promised to form groups and send them to the occupied part of the Kherson region in order to evacuate the population from flooded settlements and provide humanitarian assistance. 

On June 9, the UN called the cause of the destruction of the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station “unclear”.

(C)UNIAN 2023