“Russians also shell lifeboats” -
Appeal for donations and report from flooded Kherson.

Blowing up of the Kachowka Dam repre­sents a crime against humanity. The people in the flooded areas are literally faced with nothing — and yet want to keep fighting. Marieluise Beck was in Kherson with Ukrainian aid organizations.

I was in flooded Kherson on June 17 and 18. The situation of the people in the areas flooded by the blasting of the Dnipro dam by the Russian occupiers is dramatic.
I was accom­panied by volun­teers from an aid organi­zation in Odesa. We have long supported citizens’ initia­tives like this with the “Brücke der Hoffnung”. They are more nimble than state author­ities. They urgently need our donations for their human­i­tarian work.

In the streets of Kherson, where the water has drained away, there is a horrible smell. We saw no Red Cross, no UNHCR, no official helpers, but many desperate old people, mostly women. When you approach them, they start crying about their destroyed lives.
Where should they start? The gardens are streaked with gray mud. Entire walls have broken away from the houses. There is no electricity or clean water. Every help is needed so that the people can get their feet back on the ground.

For Putin, a human life counts for nothing

One thinks it could not be worse. But we see only a small part of the destruction. Almost 80 percent of the flooded area is in the east of Dnipro. Nobody helps there. No one goes there. As once for Stalin, for Putin a human life counts for nothing. The Russian occupiers do not allow any help. How many dead there are there? We do not know. Some say the dimen­sions are those of a tactical nuclear bomb.

“The Russians are also shelling lifeboats”

In Kherson, at a gathering place for evacu­ation, there is a man among the waiting people who made it out of the occupied terri­tories. For five days he sat on the roof with his family and was finally rescued by Ukrainian volun­teers. When the Russians realized that people were being rescued, they began shelling the rescue boats.
Kakhovka Dam — The name now stands for a great crime against humanity. And no, it was not like in the Ahr Valley in West Germany, where the water masses unexpectedly swept every­thing away. It was not a natural disaster that took every­thing from so many people.

Inten­tional Destruction

The blowing up of the dam followed a plan: the inten­tional destruction of people’s liveli­hoods, their homes, their farmland, their animals. The water supply of entire cities with hundreds of thousands of inhab­i­tants is acutely endan­gered. Kakhovka was conceived by a man to whom the life of a human being means nothing, who wants to sweep every­thing away to ruin if he cannot conquer Ukraine.
Some say, maybe it was not the Russian military that blew up the dam? Aside from the fact that all circum­stantial evidence points to the Russian occupiers, there is a long tradition of denying such misdeeds. Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 — and it was supposedly green men. The passenger plane MH 17 was shot down by Russian missiles — and it is said to have been Ukrainian military. So now the Ukrainians are supposed to drown their own people and block the way for their troops across the Dnipro? It’s time to put an end to the lies.

“If we don’t fight, the Russians will take every­thing from us”

I ask many people in Kherson: Must Ukraine finally stop fighting now? And they all say: If we don’t fight, the Russians will take every­thing from us. What can we do, what can you do? We can inform and wake up — and we ask you to help the people in Kherson and other regions through your donations!

The “Brücke der Hoffnung” supports aid organi­za­tions and initia­tives in Ukraine, with which we have been cooper­ating for many years. You can find an overview of how the donations are used on our website https://brueckederhoffnung.de/verwendung