Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called this a "smoking gun", saying that it would take somebody with a "very vivid imagination" to believe that the passing of this legislation less than a week prior to the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, covering precisely the circumstances that would transpire, was just a coincidence.

"[48][51] The Institute for the Study of War reported on June 6, the day the dam was destroyed, that "Russian sources have expressed intense and explicit concern over the possibility that Ukraine has been preparing to cross the river and counterattack into east bank Kherson Oblast.

[9] Ihor Syrota, the director general of the Ukrainian hydroelectric power company Ukrhydroenergo, rejected the possibility of shelling or catastrophic structural failure as Russian propaganda.

[66] According to Mark Mulligan, professor of Physical Geography at King's College London,[67] "Structural failure resulting from the impact of earlier damage associated with the war remains a possibility.

[33] According to Andrew Barr, an expert in the effects of blast damage on structures at the University of Sheffield,[68] the dam actually had three different components:[69] Very early video footage shows that the barrage was the first to go, most likely by explosives.

[82][83] The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in reference to the NYT report, concurred that "the preponderance of available evidence, reasoning, and rhetoric suggests that Russian forces deliberately damaged the dam".

[96][97][98][99] The brigade's Telegram channel warned in October 2022 that the dam was mined and would be blown up if Ukrainian forces attempted to cross the Dnieper, also giving advice for Russian troops to stay safe.

[102] According to The New York Times, "a senior American military official" reported that the U.S. government "had ruled out an external attack on the dam, like a missile, bomb or some other projectile, and now assesses that the explosion came from one or more charges set inside it, most likely by Russian operatives.

[105] The Associated Press reported in December 2023 that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted casualties by immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead and threatening them when they defied orders.

[110] The Ukrainian governor of Kherson Oblast, Oleksandr Prokudin, said that about 600 square kilometres (230 sq mi) of the region was underwater and that 68 percent of the flooded territory was on the Russian-controlled side.

[116][117] The governor of Kherson Oblast, Oleksandr Prokudin, told Ukrainian TV on the morning of 6 June that eight villages had been flooded, and that evacuations by bus and train were ongoing for 16,000 residents in the affected areas.

Erik Tollefsen, head of Red Cross's weapons section, said: Former minister of ecology Ostap Semerak said that this was the biggest environmental catastrophe in Ukraine since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

[136] The release of chemicals such as ammonia and bacteria such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli and Vibrio cholerae into the Dnipro-Buh Delta and the Black Sea following the dam's destruction led to beach closures and fishing bans across Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts.

"[137] In the weeks following the dam's destruction, Ukraine claimed that outbreaks of intestinal diseases such as cholera had broken out in Russian-occupied areas of Kherson Oblast and Crimea, adding that several Russian soldiers had died as a result.

[138][139] According to ecologist Alexey Vasilyuk, for decades industrial waste from Zaporizhzhia, including a huge amount of heavy metals, settled in the mud at the bottom of the Kakhovka Reservoir since there was no flow to disturb it.

The increased difficulty of moving forces in the area would help secure the Russian southern flank, freeing up military resources to repel Ukraine's offensive in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

[176] Conversely, according to the Russian-installed governor of Kherson Vladimir Saldo, any restoration work on the dam and power plant will be performed by the Russian side, and only after Ukrainian troops are pushed away to a safe distance.

The Ukrainians accused the Russians of not having a clear plan on how to solve the problem, and trying to avoid the issue and resorting to propaganda in order to prevent panic among the local population instead of working in terms of infrastructure.

[218][219] Oleksandr Krasnolutskyi, Ukraine's deputy minister of environmental protection and natural resources,[220] stated that the floodwater has washed away the topsoil layers from thousands of hectares of farms and arable lands.

The dam disaster, however, will lead to lower farming revenue for Ukraine and could result in food shortages on world markets and potentially famine in poor countries that rely on Ukrainian grain exports.

[224] In an interview on 13 July 2023 Mykola Solskyi, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, stated that as a result of draining the Kakhovka Reservoir 11,400 tons of fish were lost, worth ₴9.8 billion[225] (US$267M).

[231] Ruslan Strilets, Ukrainian Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, said on 21 June that the destruction of the dam caused an initial US$1.5 billion[232] of damage, and also warned that Russian mines released by flooding could float onto the shores of other European countries.

[245] Greenpeace legal advisor Daniel Simons said on 13 June 2023 that a trial against the perpetrator of the dam destruction could be launched in the International Criminal Court (ICC), in The Hague, if sufficient evidence appears.

"Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute of the [International Criminal Court] qualifies as a crime the intentional attack that causes extensive, lasting, and serious damage to the surrounding natural environment, which will be clearly excessive in comparison with concrete and immediately expected general military advantage," he said.

[268] Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the incident should be subject to a "worldwide study, research and investigation" and accused the West of having an "endless desire to blame Russia for everything".

[275] The Moldovan President Maia Sandu and Prime Minister Dorin Recean condemned the incident and said Moldova was ready to provide help to Ukraine to mitigate the flood damage.

"[285] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's office said after the call with Zelenskyy that "a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community, including Turkey, for a detailed investigation into the explosion at Kakhovka dam.

On 18 July, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced the government's approval of a plan to rebuild the Hydroelectric Power Plant, which would last two years and involve two stages: designing all engineering structures and preparing the necessary base for restoration, and the construction work, which was to commence upon the removal of Russian forces from the area.

[209] It has been reported that Rostec, a Russian state-owned defense conglomerate, plans to build 9 seawater desalination plants in Crimea by 2030, with a total capacity of about 1 billion m3 of freshwater per year.

[300][301] On 12 June, Ukrainian intelligence claimed that Russia was mining the workshops of the Crimean Titan chemical factory in Armiansk, the explosion of which was feared to cause a major disaster.