Up to 382,000 people in Donetsk Oblast have lost supplies of running water amid an upsurge of fighting in the region, local authorities and emergency services report.
After the shelling of a pumping station inside the war zone, the South Donbas water pipeline has been dry for five days, cutting main water supplies to government-controlled cities west and south of occupied Donetsk, including Dobropillya, Pokrovsk, Mariinka, Vuhledar, Krasnohorivka, Volnovakha, and Mariupol.
“As of now, 14 cities and 58 towns are without running water – that’s 382,000 people,” Donetsk Oblast governor Pavlo Zhebrivsky wrote on his Facebook page on June 12.
Due to continuing hostilities, repair works on damaged pump stations had not started as of noon on June 13. The local authorities and emergency services have organized water tanker deliveries of drinking water for civilians in the affected cities.
Water is also being pumped from backup reservoirs, but all water reserves will run dry in two days, Ukraine’s emergency service said on June 13.
An emergency situation could be declared in Donetsk Oblast due to the widespread water shortages, Zhebrivskiy said.
Interruptions to water supplies across the war-torn region began on June 8, when a water pumping station near the village of Vasylivka was shelled.
The station is in a militant-controlled area some six kilometers northwest of government-controlled Avdiyivka.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe visited the site shortly after the attack. According to an OSCE report, they found the remains of an 82-milimeter mortar round and impact damage from machine-gun bullets and anti-tank rounds there, as well as other shell impact craters, but were unable to determine the direction of fire.
As the main pumping unit for the South Donbas pipeline, the station near Vasylivka delivers water to filtration stations in Donetsk, Pokrovsk, and Volnovakha, and also provides technical water to big local plants such as the Avdiyivka Coke Plant and the Kurakhovo thermal power plant.
In all, up to 1 million people in the region depend on water pumped through the South Donbas pipeline by the Vasylivka station, Ukrainian members of the Joint Coordination and Control Center (JCCC), a body liaising between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries, said on June 11.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Occupied Territories said the unit’s operating personnel was immediately evacuated soon after it was shelled on June 8 at 7.30 a.m. local time. As many as 14 impact craters and another 10 unexploded shells were found in the area, Zhebrivskiy said in a statement on June 8.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for the setting up of safety zones around vital infrastructure units in the near-frontline zones, also offering to mediate between Ukraine and Kremlin-backed forces on June 11.
But the ICRC initiative was immediately rejected by Russian-backed forces, with Denys Pushilin, a spokesperson for the pseudo authorities in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast, demanding the mutual withdrawal of troops from the frontline on June 12 as per the Minsk agreement.
However, the OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine has continued to report the presence of both Ukrainian and Russian-backed forces’ heavy weaponry and vehicles in the demilitarized 15-kilometer zone along the Donbas frontline.
By noon on June 8, the situation in the area had stabilized, but workers refused to return to work and restart the water pumps. The station was eventually restarted the next day and continued working even through another shelling incident at noon June 10.
But then on June 11 shelling cut the electricity supply to the pumping station, bringing the pumps to a halt again.
“The power line was broken, the transformer disabled, and the pumping unit’s building was damaged,” Zhebrivskiy said on his Facebook page on June 11.
Water supplies to districts west and south of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk were completely suspended, and Mariupol switched to consuming water from its two pumping units.
The cuts also affected occupied territories supplied by Ukrainian-controlled pumping units. On June 11, the pseudo authorities in occupied Dokuchaevsk some 20 kilometers north of Volnovakha declared an emergency situation in the town due to water reserves running out.
The Ukrainian members of the JCCC say they are negotiating safety guarantees from Russian side to let repairing teams into no man’s land to reconnect the power supply to the pumping station, and thus resume water supplies in the region.
“Just like other crucial objects of Donbas civilian infrastructure, the South Donbas water pipeline pumping station is under special attention from the ATO (anti-terror operation) command concerning the avoidance of any ceasefire violations at their locations,” the military press office quotes the Ukrainian delegation to JCCC as saying on June 11.
“Even if they have to open retaliatory fire, those objects are given constant security guarantees by Ukraine’s armed forces.”
From the afternoon of June 12 the station underwent checks by state water company electricians, accompanied by OSCE monitors and DTEK energy сorporation specialists, Zhebrivskiy reported on his Facebook page.
“When the check is finished, we will demand access to the unit for repair crews, on the condition that there are security guarantees,” the governor said on the evening of June 12.
However, as of noon on June 13, there were no reports of any such guarantees being given by Russian-backed forces.
