By Hugues Maillot
Posted 1 hour ago, updated 41 minutes ago
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When the reservoir is emptied, memories of another time arise. Recent finds include skulls and weapons that may have come from the gigantic Battle of the Dnieper in 1943 between four million Soviets and Germans.
Who would have thought that the war in Ukraine would bring archaeological remains to light? The destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper upstream from Kherson is a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe. But it has recently led to some unusual discoveries. As the 18 billion cubic meter reservoir empties, memories of times past rise to the surface.
While it’s not uncommon to discover remains of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles since the building collapsed, weapons and much older ammunition were discovered this weekend. But also human bones. Several videos taken on both banks of the Dnieper show skulls scattered in the mud. One of them even wears a WWII German helmet.
More than three and a half million soldiers were deployed
The images could not be independently identified. However, several historians consulted by the Guardian believe they could be the remains of soldiers who died during the gigantic Battle of the Dnieper in 1943. In this confrontation, often described as one of the largest in history, 2.6 million Soviet soldiers fought more than a million German soldiers. More than 60,000 pieces of artillery, 4,500 tanks and nearly 5,000 aircraft were deployed. The losses were also enormous: between 400,000 and a million on the German side, more than 300,000 on the Soviet side.
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The area where the bones and weapons were found is around the town of Nikopol, southwest of the occupied town of Zaporizhia. Here the fiercest fighting of the Battle of the Dnieper took place, which stretched over a front of 1400 km. Near Nikopol, “losses of Soviet troops ranged from 30,000 to 60,000 people, and those of German troops reached 20,000 people,” says Guardian Andrii Solonets, a historian at the National Museum of History of Ukraine.
Remains devoured by the waves
So these skulls found in the mud could well belong to soldiers who fell during that battle. And more likely for German soldiers, since their bodies were “left in place” while Soviet bodies were buried, points out Oleksii Kokot, an expert on German military relics. Many remains were probably swallowed up by the waves after the construction of the Kachowka Dam in 1956.
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The German War Graves Commission is likely to deal intensively with these finds, reports the British daily. But she will have to wait until the end of the war to get there.