Kakhovka Reservoir Water Levels Shown Before and After Dam Was Blown Up

A viral video shows the devastating impact of the destruction of the dam at Nova Kakhovka in Ukraine's southern Kherson region.

Ukraine has said that Russian occupation forces blew up Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) on June 6, destroying the dam and the power plant's turbine hall. The facility is beyond repair. Moscow has denied responsibility.

The clip, tweeted by Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko, pans across the horizon and shows the reservoir "before and after the dam was blown up."

From the same location, the footage shows how much the water had subsided. Gerashchenko said on Monday morning that levels were decreasing by six to seven centimeters (2.35 to 2.76 inches) per hour and that they had fallen to 10.07 meters (30 feet). As of Monday, the 20-second video had been viewed more than 124,000 times.

Ukraine's Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources said on Sunday that 70 percent of water, or 13.95 cubic kilometers, from the reservoir had been lost.

The collapse of the dam has sent water cascading downstream. It has flooded 230 square miles of territory, inundating towns and villages as rescuers desperately try to get residents to safety.

Samir Chalhoub is the regional policy and advocacy adviser for Mercy Corps, which is monitoring the humanitarian consequences of the destroyed dam. He told Newsweek that the danger to civilians in the flooded areas "are mounting by the hour" amid reports of elderly people and those with disabilities stuck in high waters.

Chalhoub said contamination is "putting the most vulnerable at high risk of health complications." There were also reports of unexploded ordinances such as landmines being dislodged by the flooding, "posing an immediate and lethal risk to those who remain."

Alla Hurska is an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C. She told Newsweek last week that the dam's destruction will threaten drinking water supplies for people in the south of the Kherson oblast and those in Crimea.

Hurska added that the gateway of the hydroelectric station allowed shipping from the Dnieper River to the Black Sea, in particular to the ports of Kherson and Mykolaiv. "It seems that the prospect of a full-fledged restoration of river transport after the blasting of the Kakhovka dam has become doubtful," Hurska said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Sunday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had visited Kherson and started its investigation into the disaster, which Kyiv and environmentalists have called "ecocide."