Destruction of the Oskil Dam in Ukraine, March–September 2022: A Remote Assessment of Environmental Impacts
Publisher: Conflict Observatory
Author(s): CURIA Lab
Date: 2024
Topics: Assessment, Renewable Resources, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution
Countries: Russian Federation, Ukraine
This report investigates the March and September 2022 breaches of the Oskil Dam, the second of which rendered the dam inoperable for 22 months. The Oskil River and its dam are part of a complex water supply system in southeast Ukraine. A tributary of the Siverskyi Donets River, the Oskil River supplies water to the entire Donetsk region up to Mariupol through the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas canal. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the dam was a critical regulator of drinking and agricultural water in one of Ukraine’s driest regions. In the first part of the report, we analyze the environmental impacts caused by downriver flooding after the breaches. Using remote sensing methods, we document significantly degraded vegetation health and a marked decrease in soil moisture content. The second part of the report investigates what caused the breaches. Using open source information in Ukrainian and Russian, we document the strategic importance of the Oskil Dam as both a civilian infrastructure and an operational defensive boundary. We document Ukrainian and Russian armed forces’ fight for territorial control in the vicinity of the Oskil Dam in March through September 2022. The military activities in this period included high-impact weapons capable of causing significant structural damage to the dam. The information analyzed here does not support a definitive attribution of blame to either side. It does definitively attribute the dam’s failure to kinetic fighting. Although further investigations are needed, this report offers a step toward environmental legal accountability.