The Kakhovka Dam was a dam on the Dnieper River in Kherson Oblast, Ukraine, completed in 1956 and destroyed in 2023, which provided water for the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station. The primary purposes of the dam were hydroelectric power generation, irrigation, and navigation. It was the sixth and last dam in the Dnieper reservoir cascade.
The dam's spillways in use in 2013
The lock through the dam
A panorama of the central section of the dam, with the reservoir beyond it
Flooding in Kherson the day after the dam's destruction
The Dnieper, also called Dnipro or Dniapro, is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately 2,200 km (1,400 mi) long, with a drainage basin of 504,000 square kilometres (195,000 sq mi), it is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth-longest river in Europe, after the Volga, Danube, and Ural rivers.
Dnieper in Kyiv
Human representation of the Dnieper river (known as Borysthenes) on an Ancient Greek coin of Pontic Olbia, 4th–3rd century BC
Pre-1918 photo with the old spelling of Dnieper (Днѣпръ)
Rapids at Dnieper in 1915