About 50 civilian vessels from the Kakhovka Reservoir will be relocated to Zaporizhzhia so that they do not run aground, said the head of the Shipping Administration, Yevhen Ignatenko. The Dnipro River will remain navigable above the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant (Zaporizhzhia Region), but not for long, he clarified.
The Dnipro is Ukraine’s main river shipping artery, and the Kakhovka lock was the last on the river and provided passage for all vessels to reach the sea. One avenue for Ukrainian exports has been closed to Ukraine due to the Russian’s Black Sea blockade, but now Ukraine also faces problems upstream. The water level in the Kakhovka Reservoir is falling by 10 cm every hour.
“The permissible level at the lower bay of the Zaporizhzhia Lock is 14 meters. If the level drops below this mark, we cannot carry out sluicing in Zaporizhzhya“, Ignatenko said.