An investigative documentary by Olesia Bida about how the occupation authorities of the eastern bank of Kherson Oblast and the Russian military neglected and obstructed the evacuation of civilians after the Kakhovka Dam’s explosion.
To reconstruct the events and understand what happened in the flooded areas of the occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro River, the WCIU team spoke to some 50 eyewitnesses, relatives of eyewitnesses, and volunteers involved in rescuing people from the east bank. Their testimonies formed the basis of the investigation.
As a result of the dam destruction, many more civilians died from the flood in the occupied territories than Russia officially claims.
Olesia Bida is a journalist for the War Crimes Investigations Unit of The Kyiv Independent, a Ukrainian English-language media outlet. She is the author of documentary investigations about child deportation, sexual violence as a war crime, and the Kakhovka Dam's explosion.
Until 2023, she was a journalist at hromadske, where she specialised in covering sensitive topics such as gender equality, children's rights, vulnerable population groups, and sexual violence in universities, the Armed Forces, and against minors.
She has won the National Investigative Journalism Competition, the American Investigative Reporters and Editors Competition (IRE), and the Prague Press Play Film Festival. She has also won the Swedish human rights award, the Per Anger Prize.
