Early in the morning of June 6, the massive Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, under the control of Russian occupying forces, was destroyed in the largest attack on vital civilian water infrastructure since World War II. The dam and the reservoir behind it were built in the mid-1950s to provide water for growing Ukrainian cities, irrigation for Ukraine’s rich farmland, and hydroelectricity. It was one of the largest dams in Europe, and the reservoir held over 18 cubic kilometers of water – more than the entire average annual flow of the Colorado River in the U.S. In recent years, the reservoir also provided critical cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and fed water in the North Crimean Canal.