MOSCOW, June 12. /TASS/. People begin to return to their homes in Novaya Kakhovka in the Kherson Region after a flood triggered by Ukraine’s rocket strike on the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant (HPP), the city’s Mayor Vladimir Leontyev said on Monday.

"In Novaya Kakhovka, <…> people are returning to their homes," he said in an interview with the RBC television channel.

According to the mayor, water has been pumped from the basements in most of the flooded houses. The situation in the city, in his words, is better than in settlements located downstream along the Dnieper.

He said that more than 700 residential houses were flooded in the city Novaya Kakhovka alone after the burst of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant’s (HPP). "In a word, the damage is colossal," he noted.

On the morning of June 6, the Ukrainian military launched a missile attack on the Kakhovka HPP, which resulted in the destruction of gate sluice valves at the HPP’s dam, triggering an uncontrolled discharge of water. According to emergency services, there are 35 communities in the flood zone. Eight people are reported to have died and more than 60 taken to the hospital. According to acting governor of the Kherson Region Vladimir Saldo, some 7,200 peope were evacuated from the flooded settlements.

The destruction of the hydro power plant has caused serious environmental damage with farmlands along the Dnieper River being washed away. Additionally, there is a risk that the North Crimean Canal may run low and become too shallow. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the strike on the Kakhovka dam as an act of deliberate sabotage by Ukrainian forces, adding that the Kiev regime should bear full responsibility for its consequences.