MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. The West had a hand in the damage caused to the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant’s (HPP) as it has been supplying Ukraine with weapons since last year, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Tuesday.

"Outrageous terrorism, banditry. No other way to call it," Head of the Faction of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Chairman of the Duma Committee on international Affairs Leonid Slutsky said.

"The West is certainly involved, because if there had not been an endless supply of lethal weapons since late March of last year, there would have been nothing to shell the Kakhovka HPP with," Slutsky said.

"We definitely deplore such acts that are taking place nowadays," he added.

Slutsky also said that Moscow’s enemies would stop at nothing to carry out the most heinous acts against Russia.

The Ukrainian military shelled the Kakhovka hydropower plant overnight to June 6 presumably from an Olkha multiple launch rocket system, destroying the hydraulic valves at its dam and triggering an uncontrolled discharge of water. Water levels have already exceeded 10 meters in Novaya Kakhovka.

Now there are 14 settlements in the flood zone, in total about 80 may be inundated. Residents of nearby settlements are being evacuated, while authorities say that large-scale evacuations will not be required.

The destruction of the hydroelectric power station caused serious damage to the environment, farmlands along the Dnieper were washed away, and there is a risk of the North Crimean Canal drying up.