Wheat prices surged more than 3% on Tuesday. YEARS OF DAMAGEīut the wider damage to the environment and agriculture in one of the world's biggest grain exporters could be stark, further stressing global supply chains after the blockade of Ukrainian seaports last year. nuclear watchdog has played down the immediate risk, saying alternative sources of water could supply the facility for months if necessary. The dam's vast reservoir also supplies the cooling waters for Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia. The flooding has already submerged villages and towns around the city of Kherson, while Russian officials warn that the main canal supplying water to the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula is receiving drastically less water. "(This) creates a very good defending position for Russians who expect Ukrainian offensive activity,” Matysiak said. The floodtide inundating the region will prevent the use of heavy weaponry such as tanks for at least a month, said Maciej Matysiak, security expert at the Stratpoints Foundation and ex-deputy chief of Polish military counter-intelligence. "It'll help the Russians until the water subsides because it makes it more difficult for Ukraine to do assault river crossings," he said in a phone interview. "Bearing in mind Russia is on the strategic defensive and Ukraine on the strategic offensive, in the short term it's an advantage to Russia, definitely," said Ben Barry, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The dam's collapse occurred just as Ukraine was poised to launch a counteroffensive and could complicate the advance of its forces in any assault, analysts said, though Kyiv has not divulged in which direction it plans to strike. With water levels still rising, officials and analysts have begun to quantify the human and environmental costs for one of the world's most fertile agricultural countries, saying settlements and thousands of people are at risk. Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine that sent floods gushing towards surrounding towns and farmland and forced hundreds of civilians to flee on Tuesday. LONDON, June 6 (Reuters) - The breach of a huge dam on the front-line Dnipro river has muddied the picture for a much-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian invaders and threatens an environmental disaster for civilians living in the war zone.
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