Russia said Monday that more than 10,000 residential buildings were flooded across the Urals, Volga area and western Siberia as emergency services evacuated cities threatened by rising rivers.
On Sunday, Russia declared a federal emergency in the Orenburg region, where the Ural river flooded much of the city of Orsk and is now reaching dangerous levels in the main city of Orenburg.
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"On the territories of the Siberian, Privolzhye (Volga area) and the central federal regions a rise in air temperature, active snow melting and the overflow of rivers is forecast," Russia's Emergency Ministry said on social media.
"More than 10,400 residential houses are flooded."
Russia has evacuated thousands of people already, mostly in the Orenburg region near Kazakhstan.
Much of the city of Orsk has been flooded after torrential rain burst a nearby dam.
Orenburg region authorities said that the Ural river in Orsk "went down by nine centimetres" (3.5 inches) but that water levels in the main city of Orenburg, which has a population of around 550,000, were reaching dangerous thresholds.
"In Orenburg, in a day there was a rise by 16 centimetres to 872 centimetres" in the water level, the regional government said.
Its mayor Sergei Salmin was quoted by Russian media as saying the flood was expected to be "unprecedented" and warning of forced evacuations.
Russia's weather monitor Rosgidromet said that it expected the flood to peak in Orenburg on Wednesday and that several of the city's districts would be hit.
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Authorities have also warned of "inevitable" rising water levels in the Siberian regions of Tyumen and Kurgan, with the large Tobol River expected to rise.
Emergency services in Kurgan, a city of around 300,000 people near the Kazakh border, said they began "preventative evacuations" and relocated 571 people.
The Kremlin had ordered authorities in Kurgan and Tyumen to be on alert, citing "nature anomalies".
The Kakhovka Dam Collapse
Russian forces blew up and “completely destroyed” the Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam in the occupied Kherson region on June 6, 2023, prompting mass evacuations and an emergency meeting in Kyiv.
The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam is located on the Dnipro River upstream from the city of Kherson and downstream from the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant (ZNPP).
The dam held the Kakhovka reservoir in place, which can hold 18 cubic kilometers of water – approximately the same capacity as Utah's Great Salt Lake.
The 3.3-kilometer-long dam along with its hydroelectric power station was captured by Russian forces at the beginning of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
Russia has claimed the dam was destroyed by "multiple strikes" carried out by Ukrainian forces, without providing any evidence.
Ukraine on the other hand, accused Russia of blowing up the dam and even named the specific Russian army unit it alleged was responsible for installing the demolition charges.
Oleksiy Danilov, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that Ukrainian military intelligence had identified Russia’s 205th Motor Rifle Brigade as the unit most likely to have installed explosives inside the dam.
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