British Defense Ministry: Occupied Donetsk region facing growing water shortage

In its daily intelligence update on Tuesday, the British Defense Ministry said that the Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine are experiencing a worsening water shortage.

The update’s authors note that the Siversky-Donets canal, which supplies water to Donetsk, is still primarily controlled by Ukraine. Water is supplied to the city of Donetsk and numerous other regions according to a schedule, but some towns and villages in the region have no centralized water supply at all.

The Siversky-Donets canal passes through Chasiv Yar, which is only about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from Bakhmut. As a result, the report concludes, “Russia’s heavy use of indirect artillery [...] has likely inflicted collateral damage to the canal and other regional water infrastructure, undermining Russia’s efforts to remedy the lack of water that its invasion originally created.”