Rebuilding Ukraine's ruined Nova Kakhovka dam pits history against economic reality

Amid the spoiled farmland and destroyed crops, the waterlogged homes and ruined lives, the now slow-motion tragedy that is the draining of the Kakhovka reservoir is also peeling back time on an almost forgotten aspect of Ukrainian history.

The receding water has revealed the remains of an ancient settlement that people living nearby on the edge of the artificial lake refer to as the "Cossack Meadow."

Andriy Seletskiy, the mayor of Novovorontsovka — a town along the Dnipro River, about 97 kilometres upstream from the ruined Nova Kakhovka dam — considers the draining of the reservoir a milestone event and an opportunity for the government in Kyiv to consider.

"In the Kakhovka reservoir, we have more than 2,000 archeological and historical objects," Seletskiy told CBC News in an interview this week.

The discovery sets up a conundrum for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government. It has staked much of its political brand and the county's existence on preserving and strengthening Ukrainian culture and identity, including its history, which he has accused Russia of trying to erase with Moscow's campaign of bombing libraries and cultural centres. 

The desire to preserve the sites will have to be balanced against the urgent social and economic need to eventually rebuild the dam.

The Soviet-era generating station is an important source of power for southern Ukraine. It is also the source of clean drinking water for 700,000 people, according to the United Nations, and is the lifeblood for farmers in the region who depend on it to irrigate their crops.

"For Ukraine, we don't need [such a] big reservoir. We need water. We need places for agriculture, but we need our historical memory, too," said Seletskiy, who majored in history.

When the dam was constructed during the 1950s, he said, it was meant to serve the wider Soviet Union, and the communist government cared little about preserving Ukrainian history.

"They just flooded these memories of ancient times and didn't even take a picture of it," Seletskiy said.

The "meadow" — with its mix of undulating hills, grassland and forests — had been a safe haven for Cossacks for centuries before it was flooded.

Semi-nomadic and semi-militarized, the Cossacks have a long, rich — some would argue romanticized — place in history as a multi-ethnic, democratic people who were given a great deal of autonomy under Polish, Lithuanian and Russian rulers. They were hired as irregular troops and developed a fierce reputation.

A senior official in Zelenskyy's office said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian government intends to rebuild the shattered dam, but it will take years.

Rostyslav Shurma told local media that reconstruction will take place after the war — which began in February 2022, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine — is concluded.