At a ceremony in November, the Nigerian government celebrated the discovery of as many as 1 billion barrels of oil in the country’s arid northeast, almost 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away from the crude-rich Niger Delta.

The state’s partners in the multi-billion dollar project in the impoverished, landlocked corner of the country is a company founded by two brothers from India. The siblings have built the largest independent oil company in Africa’s biggest crude producing nation even as India pursues them as criminals — accusing them of perpetrating “one of the largest economic scams in the country.”  

Now, as newly elected President Bola Tinubu sets ambitious targets for Nigeria’s hydrocarbons sector, companies created by the brothers, Nitin and Chetan Sandesara, seem poised for an increasingly prominent role — especially as international oil giants such Shell Plc and ExxonMobil Corp. retreat from the West African country.

“This discovery will provide a multiplicity of opportunity and great prosperity for Nigeria,” Tinubu said at the November event. Sworn in on May 29, he was the ruling party’s presidential candidate at the time. 

The selection of a firm owned by the family of the duo branded as fugitives by India to drill wells for the project is just the latest sign of how Nigeria has provided the brothers a haven, effectively insulating them from troubles back home. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has accused the tycoons of absconding after defrauding public banks of more than $1.7 billion. Nigeria has refused India’s request to extradite them.

The Sandesara brothers, Gujarati businessmen who left India in 2017, deny cheating their lenders and say they are victims of political persecution. Having ventured into the Nigerian oil industry almost 20 years ago when they won two onshore licenses in the delta, the brothers — faced with problems in India — have shifted their focus to Lagos. They even applied for Nigerian citizenship, according to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, the country’s top investigating agency.  It’s not clear if they succeeded. The brothers’ lawyer and Nigerian authorities didn’t respond to queries on the matter.

While the brothers fight fraud charges and non-bailable warrants from India, the Sandesara businesses are flourishing in Nigeria. The African nation refused to arrest them four years ago saying the Indian allegations “appeared to be political in nature,” according to a letter published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

In India, the brothers’ private jet, swanky cars and star-studded parties at a 60,000-square-foot farmhouse in Ampad village in Gujarat routinely provided fodder for tabloids and social media sites, according to news outlet The Print. From a sanctuary on Lagos’ upscale Victoria Island, one of their Nigerian companies has continued that glitzy tradition, sponsoring annual Diwali celebrations that are the talk of the city’s small Indian community, even flying in Bollywood singers like Shreya Ghoshal to perform.

The family’s Nigerian oil and gas business — with the slogan “Success is Natural” — is thriving. The group’s subsidiaries — Sterling Oil Exploration & Production Co. and Sterling Global Oil Resources Ltd. — pump about 50,000 barrels of crude a day in the delta via contracts with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Co. Another unit expects to bring a third block into production this year that will eventually raise total daily output to above 100,000 barrels. 

Other than the international majors such as Shell and Chevron Corp., the Sandesara family is the top exporter of oil from Nigeria. Its firms’ taxes contributed 2% of the Nigerian government’s revenue, Nitin said in 2019. An export system of transporting crude on barges to a floating storage vessel in the Atlantic Ocean — rather than relying on pipelines that are vulnerable to thieves — has enabled the family’s companies to maintain a consistent performance as other producers have floundered.

The brothers have hired the plugged-in former head of the Nigerian government’s oil regulator to head their energy operations, and concluded major contracts with the state. Two years ago, Sterling Oil sealed a separate deal with the NNPC for the commercialization of the gas within one of its oil blocks in a project designed to boost the anemic power supply in Africa’s biggest economy.

“You are a very reliable partner because when you say things, you get them done,” NNPC Chief Executive Mele Kyari said of Sterling Oil, announcing the deal.

Indian authorities take a less rosy view of the Sandesaras’ practices. 

Beginning in the 1980s, the brothers transformed a family tea-trading business into a Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate spanning oil and gas, health care, construction and engineering and owning one of the world’s largest manufacturers of pharmaceutical grade gelatin. By the early 2010s, the group said it was valued at almost $7 billion. 

Some of that expansion was bankrolled by a “well calculated economic fraud” that left the group owing more than 140 billion rupees ($1.71 billion) to public lenders including State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Union Bank of India, the CBI told the country’s Supreme Court a year ago. 

Among accusations leveled against them include the use of “false and fabricated documents” to secure bank loans and the diversion of funds overseas. The same lenders also provided credit lines to the entity that owned the Nigerian oil business, the CBI said in a December 2019 charge sheet. 

State-backed lenders, including Bank of India, won two judgments from UK courts — in 2018 and 2021 — ordering Sandesara companies providing services to Sterling Oil to pay almost $60 million after they defaulted on loans.

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), which investigates money laundering and forex violation cases, said in 2019 that it wanted to seize the brothers’ overseas assets, including a Nigerian oil field, four drilling rigs and a Gulfstream aircraft. The group’s flagship business Sterling Biotech Ltd was sold to California-based alt-dairy firm Perfect Day Inc. in November for about $78 million in a transaction approved by India’s bankruptcy court.  

Following a petition by the Sandesaras to quash the CBI and ED cases against them, India’s Supreme Court paused proceedings last year. The brothers said they wanted to reach a financial resolution with creditors. But the investigating agencies have said any settlement “cannot absolve the criminal liability of the accused.” 

The brothers, who told the court their Indian companies have repaid more than was disbursed to them in loans, say the agencies’ “sole aim is to browbeat, harass, harangue and humiliate” them, and claimed they were declared fugitives in “a grossly illegal manner.” They say the Modi government has a vendetta against the Sandesaras because of their ties to opposition and Muslim politicians, according to media reports that cite their filings in other court cases.

An Indian lawyer for the Sandesaras didn’t respond to multiple emails requesting comment. The group chairman and two directors of the Nigerian oil companies didn’t reply to questions sent by Bloomberg. The CBI, ED and the Sandesaras’ main creditors also didn’t address 

queries on the status of the proceedings against the brothers.

Ironically, even as the Indian government was building its case against the pair, their Nigerian companies supplied cargoes of crude worth almost $1.5 billion to India’s state-owned refineries in the seven years to January 2020, the brothers said in court filings.

With their troubles in India showing no signs of abating, the brothers’ ties in Nigeria are deepening.

In Indian court filings in September 2022, the brothers claim ownership of Sterling Oil, the subsidiary responsible for most of the group’s crude production, touting it as a “very prominent company of Nigeria.” An online registry for Nigerian natural resources companies lists another family member — Devak Patel, the 31-year-old son of Chetan Sandesara’s brother-in-law — as the owner. Patel didn’t respond to queries seeking clarity on the company’s ownership.

Where the brothers currently spend their time is unclear. The ED accused them in 2020 of “shifting their base from one country to another to escape the clutches of law” and said they were presumed to be in Nigeria, the UK, the US or the UAE. They have also obtained Albanian passports, according to The Wire and other Indian media outlets. The brothers have neither confirmed nor denied the reports. Chetan signed an affidavit for the Indian court from Lagos in August.

Meanwhile, the Sandesaras’ participation in the new development in Nigeria’s north — a pet project of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who stepped down last month — may be yet another sign that their future lies in the West African country. 

Sterling Oil will carry out the venture with the NNPC and another public company controlled by Nigeria’s 19 northern states to bring oil production to the upper part of the country for the first time. Almost all of Nigeria’s crude currently comes from the Niger Delta and off its shores.

“It is to the credit of this administration that at a time when there is near-zero appetite for investment in fossil fuel energy, coupled with the location challenges, we are able to attract investment of over $3 billion to this project,” Buhari said at the November ceremony.

His successor Tinubu has promised to increase daily oil output by more than 60% to 2.6 million barrels by 2027 and to 4 million barrels by 2030 – an aspiration many analysts believe to be implausible. If the new government intends to achieve these goals, it will have to lean on independent producers such as Seplat Energy Plc and Sterling Oil since the likes of Shell and Exxon are trying to sell their onshore and shallow water assets. 

At the ceremony last year, Sterling Oil Chief Operating Officer Mohit Barot told Buhari that the company had secured funding to drill the wells and build a complex to produce fuel, fertilizer and electricity.

“We assure you, Mr. President, that we will deliver on our commitments and your expectations...,” Barot said. “Today is just the start of our long journey together.” 

Bloomberg

Nigeria spent more than $10 billion in a decade on three oil refineries that produced hardly any fuel, a parliamentary report said.

It cost the state-owned Nigeria National Petroleum Co. N4.8 trillion ($10.3 billion) to run the facilities from 2010 to 2020, even though they were operating far below their combined capacity of 445,000 barrels of crude per day, according to a report by a committee in the House of Representatives. The company is currently rehabilitating the plants.

By the time they were put into rehabilitation, they had almost ceased to function and output had not exceeded 30% since 2010, according to the report. That left Nigeria entirely reliant on gasoline imports, whose price was kept artificially low by fuel subsidies.

The decades-long subsidy regime was scrapped by newly sworn-in President Bola Tinubu last week and the government has been working to address the refining challenges to temper fuel prices.

A giant 650,000-barrels-per-day facility built by Africa’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, opened last month, but it’s unclear when it will be able to supply a significant quantity of refined fuel to the domestic market.

NNPC is also rehabilitating its 210,000-barrel-per-day complex  in Port Harcourt and a smaller plant in Warri through contracts worth more than $2 billion with Italy’s Maire Tecnimont SpA and South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. respectively. Both sites are expected to resume operations before the end of 2023, according to the report which Nigeria’s lower chamber of parliament approved on Tuesday.

The report advised the NNPC to consider outsourcing the management of the repaired refineries to “reputable” international firms. A spokesman for the NNPC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg

Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), says removal of the petrol subsidy by the present administration was a “forceful” attempt despite his support for it. 

Obi spoke to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday while attending the hearing of the election petition tribunal. 

The removal of the petrol subsidy followed the pronouncement of President Bola Tinubu when he said the petrol subsidy regime was over.

Afterwards, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, announced the adjusted price of petrol across its retail outlets — an action that has led to several agitations. 

Reacting to this development, Obi said while he supported the removal of the subsidy, it must be with a condition that is empirical to the people.

“If you have followed me very well right from the time I was a member of Jonathan’s economic management team, I consistently maintained that subsidy should be removed because I see it as organized crime,” the LP candidate said.

“People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed empirically in my statistical analysis that we are not consuming the amount of fuel they claim we consume.

“If you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anaesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain. It’s not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully, the pain you feel will be different.

“For me, I will go with the approach of the dentist while supporting the removal of the tooth because I wouldn’t want to go through the pain of forceful removal.

“If you read my manifesto you will see clearly how I planned to remove the subsidy. I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are getting and how we are deploying it.

“The problem in Nigeria is that when people say let’s go and suffer, let’s go and sacrifice, they don’t see the results of their suffering and their sacrifice.”

The Cable

Edo State Government on Tuesday empathized with the citizens over the removal of fuel subsidy which has led to an increase in the price of goods and services.

The state governor, Godwin Obaseki, announced that civil and public servants would work three days a week as against five days due to the rise in transportation.

He said, “In the wake of fuel subsidy removal by the Federal Government, fuel prices have increased astronomically leading to a rise in prices of goods and services and overall cost of living.

“Edo State Government shares the pains of our people and wants to assure everyone that we are standing with them in these very challenging times.

“We want to reassure our people that we will do all within our powers as a sub-national government to reduce the pains and ameliorate the sufferings our people are currently facing in the wake of the current realities.

“As a proactive government, we have since taken the step to increase the minimum wage paid to workers in Edo State from the approved N30,000 to N40,000, the highest in the country today.

“We want to assure you that we will continue to pay this amount, while we hope to increase it even further if more allocation accrues to our State from the Federal Government in view of the expected savings occasioned by the removal of the fuel subsidy.

He continued, “We know the hardship that has been caused by this policy which has radically increased the cost of transportation, eating deep into the wages of workers in the State. Therefore, Edo State Government is hereby reducing the number of work days that civil and public servants will have to commute to their workplaces from five days a week to three days a week.

“Similarly, for teachers and parents, their commuting to school will be reduced as the government is working on deepening the EdoBEST@Home initiative to create more virtual classes, thereby reducing the cost of commuting on parents, teachers and pupils. The Edo SUBEB will provide details on this initiative in the coming days.

“To lower the rising cost of energy on our people, we will continue to work with the electricity companies in the State to improve power supply to homes and businesses.

“Similarly, fibre optic connections are being made available to help our people work remotely, thereby reducing their cost of transportation.

“While government intensifies these efforts to alleviate the burden of the fuel price increase on the people during this very challenging period, we want to call on everyone to remain calm and go about their daily businesses lawfully,” the governor added.

Punch

Acting Managing Director of Nigeria Air, Dapo Olumide, has revealed that the aircraft that flew in with the logo of the airline was chartered from Ethiopian Airlines for the purpose of unveiling the logo.

Many media outlets had reported Ethiopian Airlines’ ownership of the Boeing 737-800 series aircraft flown into Abuja from Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, on May 26.

The aircraft took off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at 9:55am on May 26 and landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, at 12:43 p.m.

Shortly after the aircraft landed, Hadi Sirika, Minister of Aviation, expressed delight that after “a very long, tedious, daunting and difficult path”, the project had taken off.

He later unveiled the aircraft with registration ET-APL at the General Aviation Terminal of the Abuja airport.

Investigations showed that the aircraft flew for its original airline up till four days before it was brought to Nigeria.

It embarked on a trip from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv in Israel, according to the flight history.

Flightradar, the popular flight tracking website, said the aircraft operated between Tel Aviv and Mogadishu, Somalia, still on May 21, 2023.

On 20th May, it operated both Mogadishu in Somalia and Beirut on 20th May while the previous day it also serviced Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.

But when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Aviation on Tuesday, Olumide said Nigeria Air had yet to secure an operating licence for full flight operations, saying that the processes were still at the early stages.

Olumide said the aircraft was used pending the completion of the processes required for the operation of the airline.

He said his mandate was to secure an air operating certificate for the airline not necessarily to operate it but to secure a licence to fly.

“The aircraft that came in and left was a legitimate charter flight. Anyone of us here if we have a destination wedding in Senegal, we can charter an aircraft.”

“You don’t need to have a licence to do that, you just charter an aircraft, an aircraft you paid for it, it will be brought here, take your passengers and off you go.

“And that is what we did. But in this case, it was to unveil the logo of Nigeria Air. Ever since 2018, all you had ever seen about Nigeria Air were pictures, drawings not the real aircraft, and we thought it was time to show what the real aircraft will look like also to let shareholders see. We have institutional investors, they are not in aviation but they are putting their money for 10 to 15 years, so they need to see what the actual aircraft will look like.

“So we brought it in here to show them what the aircraft will look like, then the social media dimension came into it.

“For us to get that licence which is my mandate, we must, among other things, have three aircraft before the NCAA will give us a licence and those three aircraft must be Nigerian registered aircraft.

“So when this aircraft came on a chartered flight, everybody said we have launched Nigeria Air, there are learned people in the aviation industry who could have countered that when social media came out, but they chose not to.”

Earlier, Chairman of the Committee, Biodun Olujimi said it was unfortunate that the former Minister of Aviation failed to involve the committee and other stakeholders in the Air Nigeria project.

“To state the obvious, he failed to carry members of the Committee along in virtually all ramifications despite the degree of respect members accorded him any time he was invited for meetings.”

Daily Trust

BUA Cement has received $500 million in financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other lenders to boost production, the organisations said on Tuesday.

The IFC and BUA said in a joint statement that the funding would help the company part-finance and develop two new, energy-efficient cement production lines at its plant in Sokoto state, in northwest Nigeria.

The funding includes $160.5 million from IFC, $245 million in syndicated loans from African Development Bank, Africa Finance Corporation and the German Investment Corporation, as well as $94.5 million from institutional investors.

"The plants will run partly on alternative fuels derived from waste and solar power. Each will produce about three million tons of cement annually when complete, serving markets in Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso," IFC and BUA said.

BUA has a production capacity of 11 million tonnes and the new investment will add another 6 million tonnes.

The new financing package will also allow BUA to replace some of its diesel trucks with vehicles that run partly on natural gas in a push to cut emissions, the statement said.

Reuters

Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, on Tuesday, admitted in evidence results sheets from 17 states in Peter Obi’s petition seeking to upturn President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the 25 February poll.

Nigeria’s electoral commission, INEC, declared Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the February presidential election.

But Obi alleges electoral malpractices against INEC and Tinubu. He said there were gross violations of the constitution and the electoral law during the election.

To prove his case, Obi has been tendering tons of documentary evidence before the five-member panel of the court headed by Haruna Tsammani.

At the resumed hearing on Tuesday, Obi’s lawyer, Ben Anichebe, tendered certified true copies of results sheets from ward collation centres of 17 states of the federation.

Anichebe presented bundles of the results sheets from 21 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Adamawa State; eight LGAs of Bayelsa; 23 LGAs of Benue; 21 LGAs of Kogi State; 11 of Nasarawa State, 25 of Niger State, 18 of Ondo State and 23 of Sokoto State.

The lawyer further tendered the electoral documents from 25 LGAs of Delta State, 11 of Ekiti State, 25 LGAs of Imo; 21 of Kaduna State, 27 of Oyo State, 18 of Cross River; 15 of Edo State, 32 of Akwa Ibom State and 20 LGAs of Lagos State.

Anichebe said similar result sheets from 13 LGAs of Ebonyi State would be tendered on Wednesday (7 June) because the state was not listed in the schedule of documents for the day.

But the respondents’ lawyers, Steve Adeh for INEC, Mike Igbokwe for Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettma and Mamman Yusufari for the APC, objected to the admissibility of the documents.

The lawyers promised to provide later detailed reasons for objecting to the admissibility of the documents.

After admitting the documents as exhibits, Obi’s lawyer, Mr Anichebe, sought to adjourn the case until Wednesday.

With the agreement of the respondents’ lawyers, the court adjourned further proceedings until Wednesday.

PT

Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar has accused Independent National Electoral Commission of denying him access to election documents despite paying N6 million.

Atiku is challenging the declaration of President of Bola Tinubu by INEC at the February 25 presidential polls.

Atiku through his lead counsel, Eyitayo Jegede told the presidential election tribunal on Tuesday that INEC’s refusal to provide the documents is frustrating the PDP candidate’s case.

Jegede said the team had to subpoena INEC officials to provide the required documents before the tribunal.

The documents requested to prove his case against Tinubu are results from 10 of 21 LGAs including Ankpa, Dekina, Idah, Ofu, Olamaboro, Yagba East, Yagba West, Kabba-Bunu, and Igalamela Odolu.

Punch

Two different Speakers emerged in the seventh Nasarawa State House of Assembly on Tuesday.

They are the immediate past Speaker, Ibrahim Balarabe-Abdullahi, who is seeking a third term as Speaker and Daniel Ogazi, a member representing Kokona East constituency in the Assembly.

While Balarabe-Abdullahi was elected at a sitting which took place at the Ministry for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Ogazi emerged as Speaker from the proceedings at the State Assembly complex.

Before the elections which produced both Speakers, a press statement was earlier issued by the acting Clerk of the House, Ibrahim Musa, indicating that the inauguration of the 24 members-elect and the election of a new Speaker of the Assembly had been postponed indefinitely.

Security operatives barricaded the entrance and prevented everyone, including 13 out of the 24 members-elect from gaining access to the assembly premises.

The 13 members-elect are believed to be supporters of Ogazi, who is a member of the All Progressives Congress but collaborating with members-elect from the opposition political parties, while 11 members were loyal to Balarabe-Abdullahi, who is also a member of the APC in the state.

Punch

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

War zone villagers flee after massive Ukraine dam destroyed

A torrent of water burst through a massive dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, flooding a swathe of the war zone, forcing villagers to flee and prompting finger-pointing from both sides.

Ukraine said Russia had committed a deliberate war crime in blowing up the Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam, which powered a hydroelectric station. The Kremlin blamed Ukraine, saying it was trying to distract from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering.

Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had collapsed on its own, while Washington said it was uncertain who was responsible. But Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood told reporters it would not make sense for Ukraine to destroy the dam.

Neither side offered immediate public evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions ban targeting dams in war because of the danger to civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address that his prosecutors had already approached the International Criminal Court about the dam incident. Earlier, he claimed on Telegram that Russian forces blew up the power plant from inside.

Buses, trains and private vehicles were marshalled to carry people to safety while some people waded in knee-deep water, carrying pets and luggage.

"Residents are sitting on the roofs of their homes waiting to be rescued.... This is a Russian crime against people, nature and life itself," Oleksiy Kuleba, a senior official on Zelenskiy's staff, said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials reported well over 1,000 people rescued from Kherson city along with residents evacuated from flooded towns and villages.

A Russian-installed official said some 22,000 people in the Kherson region were at risk, RIA news agency said. Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram that 80 settlements were in the flood zone.

"More and more water is coming every hour. It's very dirty," Yevheniya, a woman in Nova Kakhovka on the Russian-controlled bank of the Dnipro, said by telephone.

It was not immediately clear if anyone died but U.S. spokesman John Kirby said it had probably caused "many deaths".

"Our local school and stadium downtown were flooded," Lidia Zubova, 67, told Reuters as she waited for a train out of Ukrainian-controlled Kherson city after abandoning her inundated village of Antonivka. "The road was completely flooded, our bus got stuck."

Ukrainian police released video of an officer carrying an elderly woman to safety and others rescuing dogs in villages being evacuated as the waters rose. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko accused Russia of shelling areas where people were being evacuated and said two police officers were wounded.

The flooding caused waters to rise by 3.5 meters (11-1/2 feet), Ukrainian official Kuleba said. Flooding would crest on Wednesday then levels would start to fall within three to four days, Ihor Syrota, head of Ukraine's hydroelectric power authority, told the U.S-funded radio station Donbas Realii.

Residents in Russian-controlled Nova Kakhovka told Reuters that some had decided to stay despite being ordered out.

"They say they are ready to shoot without warning," said one man, Hlib, describing encounters with Russian troops.

The Kazkova Dibrova zoo on the Russian-held riverbank was completely flooded and all 300 animals were dead, a representative said via the zoo's Facebook account.

The dam supplies water to a wide area of southern Ukrainian farmland, including the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, as well as cooling the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

The vast reservoir behind the dam is one of the main geographic features of southern Ukraine, 240 km (150 miles) long and up to 23 km (14 miles) wide.

POISED FOR COUNTEROFFENSIVE

The dam's destruction threatened a new humanitarian disaster in the centre of the war zone and transformed front lines just as Ukraine prepares a long-awaited counteroffensive to drive Russian troops from its territory.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said his forces had thwarted the first three days of the offensive in battles that had left more than 3,700 Ukrainian soldiers dead or wounded.

Ukraine dismissed the Russian statements as lies but gave no details on the attacks.

Russia has controlled the dam since early in its 15-month-old invasion, although Ukrainian forces recaptured the Dnipro's northern bank last year. Both sides had long accused the other of plotting to destroy the dam.

"Russian terrorists. The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land," Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the dam's destruction "an outrageous act, which demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia's war in Ukraine".

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the United Nations had no independent information on how the dam was breached, describing it as "another devastating consequence" of Russia's invasion.

The U.N. Security Council was meeting to discuss the dam at the request of both Russia and Ukraine.

Russia cast it as an "act of sabotage carried out by Ukraine", according to the request seen by Reuters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also blamed "deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side".

Earlier, Russian-installed officials had given conflicting accounts. Some said Ukrainian missiles hit the dam overnight, others said it collapsed due to earlier damage.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said the Zaporizhzhia power plant, upriver on the reservoir's Russian-occupied bank, should have enough water to cool its reactors for "some months" from a separate pond, even as the huge reservoir drains out.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia holds West responsible for dam disaster – UN envoy

Ukraine destroyed the Kakhovka dam in an “unthinkable crime” intended to harm Crimea for choosing Russia in 2014, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday.

The Russian diplomat brought up US media reports documenting the Ukrainian attacks on the Kakhovka dam in December 2022, using the US-supplied HIMARS rockets.

“Feeling its total impunity and being encouraged by Western sponsors, the Kiev regime decided to carry out this terrorist plot this time,” Nebenzia said. He noted that the Ukrainians had significantly increased the discharge of water from the Dnepropetrovsk hydroelectric power station, leading to even greater flooding downstream, “which indicates that this sabotage was planned in advance.”

The terrorist act was intended to free up Ukrainian forces for the “counter-offensive” currently getting bogged down in Zaporozhye, while inflicting massive humanitarian damage on the population of Kherson Region, Nebenzia said.

Not only did the flood render a dozen towns along the Dnieper River uninhabitable, it has also reduced the levels of water in the North Crimea canal, which supplies water to the Russian peninsula. Ukraine had shut off the canal after Crimea voted to rejoin Russia in a 2014 referendum. It was only reopened last year, when Russian troops took control of the area.

According to Nebenzia, Kiev “once again decided to take revenge on the Crimeans for their choice in favor of Russia and leave the population of Crimea without water.”

Nebenzia called the claims by Ukraine, US and EU officials that Russia was responsible for the dam’s destruction a “well-coordinated disinformation campaign,” in the same vein as previous allegations that Moscow was behind the shelling of its own people at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, or the destruction of Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea.

According to the Russian envoy, Kiev has fully embraced terrorist tactics, from the bombing of the Crimean Bridge to the targeted assassinations of journalists Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, and the attempt on Zakhar Prilepin – which none of the Western governments said a word to condemn.

“The Kiev regime has good teachers, responsible for destroying the Nord Stream [pipeline] and the deliberate targeting of the Tabqa dam in Syria. The West is used to doing the dirty work with other people’s hands,” the Russian envoy told the Security Council.

“We also do not rule out an attempt at provocation against the Zaporozhye NPP,”Nebenzia said, given that the UN has persistently refused to condemn Ukrainian attacks on the facility, “although it is obvious to everyone which side they are coming from.”

** Ukraine rebuffs Vatican peace attempt

The only end to the conflict that Kiev considers acceptable is the Ukrainian “peace formula,” President Vladimir Zelensky told the Holy See envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi in a meeting on Tuesday. 

“Ukraine welcomes the willingness of other states and partners to find ways to achieve peace, but since the war is on our territory, the formula for achieving peace can only be Ukrainian,” Zelensky said after meeting the papal emissary in Kiev.

Zelensky added that he discussed the situation in Ukraine and the humanitarian cooperation with the Vatican “within the framework of the Ukrainian peace formula,” and urged the Holy See to join the efforts to pressure Russia.

Zuppi arrived in Ukraine on Monday, in what the Vatican called a “search for paths to a just and lasting peace.” In addition to Zelensky, he met with other Ukrainian officials, including parliamentary commissioner for human rights Dmitry Lubinets.

“The results of these talks, like those with religious representatives as well as the direct experience of the atrocious suffering of the Ukrainian people as a result of the ongoing war, will be brought to the Holy Father’s attention,” the press office of the Holy See said in a statement on Tuesday evening.

This is the second time in two months that Zelensky has declined an offer by Pope Francis to mediate in the conflict with Russia. After his meeting with the pontiff at the Vatican last month, the Ukrainian president told Italian media outlets that Kiev was only interested in its own vision of peace.

“It was an honor for me to meet His Holiness, but he knows my position: the war is in Ukraine and the [peace] plan must be Ukrainian,” Zelensky told talk show host Bruno Vespa. 

The “peace formula” in question is a list of Zelensky’s demands first revealed in November 2022, ranging from Russia’s withdrawal from all territories Ukraine claims – including Crimea and the Donbass – payment of reparations, war crimes trials for the Russian leadership, and Ukraine’s membership in NATO. 

Moscow has rejected Zelensky’s “peace platform” as delusional. Russia understands that any peace talks will not be held “with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters last month.

Reuters/RT