Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 12) — Ukraine has asked countries including the Philippines for assistance to recover from the collapse of its Nova Kakhovka dam, a representative from its embassy in Malaysia told CNN Philippines.

“We addressed every government and the Philippines government as well to get the water pumps, to get fresh water, to get filters, to get boats to evacuate people,“ Chargé d’affaires Denys Mykhailiuk of the Ukraine Embassy in Malaysia told The Source on Monday.

“The next step should be the medical equipment and the easily-constructing dwellings for those who evacuated from the areas which are flooded,” he added.
The Russian-occupied dam, located on Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, burst on June 6 that forced over 1,400 people to flee their homes, CNN reported. It is the largest reservoir in Ukraine in terms of volume.

READ: Collapse of Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka dam an ‘ecological catastrophe’

Mykhailiuk said the collapse of the hydropower plant has flooded 80 cities and villages and more than 20,000 people have to be evacuated.
It is still unclear if the dam was deliberately attacked or the collapse was due to structural failure, with Kyiv and Moscow accusing one another over the dam’s destruction without providing concrete proof, CNN said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described it as “an environmental bomb of mass destruction.”

While floodwaters are now subsiding, debris washed along the Dnipro river is turning the Black Sea coastline in Odesa City into “a garbage dump and animal cemetery,” Ukrainian authorities said.

“We need all the humanitarian assistance we can get immediately,” Mykhailiuk said. “We need the statements from the governments of the world condemning the atrocities and war crimes by the Russian federation.”