‘Everything is drowning.’ Nova Kakhovka dam collapse brings added danger to frontline city of Kherson

Nadejda Chernishova breathes a sigh of relief as she steps off a rubber dinghy, moments after being rescued from her flooded home in Kherson.

“I’m not afraid now, but it was scary in my home,” the 65-year-old retiree said. “You don’t know where the water is going, and it was coming from all sides.”

Her house in one of the lower lying districts of Kherson was flooded after the Nova Kakhovka dam, 58 kilometers (36 miles) up the Dnipro river in Russian-occupied Ukraine, was destroyed earlier on Tuesday.

“[The water] went up in an instant,” she added. “In the morning there was nothing.”

Chernishova left most of her small world behind, bringing only what she was able to muster: two suitcases and her most prized possession.

“This is my cat Sonechka, a beauty,” she said, lifting the lid of a small her pet carrier and revealing a frightened animal. “She is scared, she is a domestic cat who has never been outside.”