Extract from ABC News
There's a tidal mark on Viktoria's trousers and tears in her eyes.
Two burly Ukrainian men have just rescued her and her elderly parents from floodwaters and taken them to dry land at the intersection of one of Kherson's main streets.
Like other survivors being dropped off here, Viktoria is in a state of shock. Floods don't normally happen without rain.
"My husband woke me up at two in the morning. My parents live on the first floor, and we live on the second. My parents were flooded, they began to call us for help," she tells the ABC.
"Everything was like a nightmare that night."
Viktoria is one of tens of thousands of residents who were trapped in flood waters following the destruction of the Nova Kahovka dam.
What makes her story even more remarkable is that she has been rescued from the floodwaters on the left bank of the Dnipro River.
That's the part of the Kherson region that has remained under Russian occupation since March last year and where an estimated 68 per cent of the flooded territory is located.
She says the Russian occupiers are doing nothing to help stranded residents, and that she was only rescued because a friend came to her aid.
"There is no help," she says.
Viktoria's husband joined the Ukrainian rescue efforts in the occupied territory, ferrying people to safety at a nearby checkpoint.
He reported the Russians stationed there told the Ukrainians they were on their own.
"They were told, 'we will stay for half an hour and leave, and you do as you wish'," Viktoria says.
"My husband says that there are still 60-70 people there."
Ukraine's prime minister has called on the International Red Cross to intervene and help rescue those stranded in Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region.
"The Russian occupiers don't even make an effort to help these people, they have left them to perish," Denys Shmyhal said in a video message to the UN and Red Cross posted on social media.
"We appeal to you to take charge of evacuating people from the territory of Kherson oblast occupied by Russia, we must save the lives of people whom the occupiers have condemned to death."
Aid agencies are warning that people could die if they are left without food and clean water.
Ukrainian drones have been deployed to drop water to people in occupied areas who are yet to be rescued.
Viktoria has seen it all in Kherson – through the occupation, the near-constant Russian shelling following liberation, and now this. She hopes for some form of justice.
"I hope they get everything they did to us here," she says. "God sees everything."
Rescuers workers under attack
Rescue workers, many of them volunteers, are not only dealing with dangers presented by the floodwaters: Russian forces have continued to shell the city during evacuations.
On Thursday, at least nine people were wounded, including one policeman and two emergency services workers.
Vitalli, who grew up in the port city of Skadovsk around 100km from Kherson, is one of the rescue workers who has continued through the bombardment.
"Earlier, we came under fire. During these past two days we were not under fire, thank God," says Vitalli.
Over the past few days, he's responded to several calls for help.
"Forty minutes ago, an old woman was evacuated," he tells the ABC.
"We received a call from a military serviceman who is fighting and asked us to evacuate his grandmother. We did it.
"In the morning, we evacuated a child and a woman, as well their animals."
Other dangers lurk beneath the flood waters, as Ruslan, another volunteer told the ABC.
"Two days ago, we evacuated animals, and woman and a child in the village of Sadove. High-voltage poles were visible only a metre above the water," he says.
There are also real concerns about land mines that have been uprooted by the flood waters and sent downstream into residential areas.
The International Red Cross is warning this could pose a grave danger to civilians in southern Ukraine for decades to come.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation is sending emergency medical supplies to the region. It's concerned about the risks of water-borne diseases like cholera.
Ukraine claims evidence Russia destroyed dam
Ukraine's domestic security service (the SBU) published a 90 second audio clip it says proves that a Russian "sabotage group" blew up the Kahovka dam and hydro-electric station.
The audio, which the SBU claims is from an intercepted phone call, features two unidentified men who appear to be discussing the fallout from the explosion.
The clip features the following exchange:
"They (the Ukrainians) didn't strike it. That was our sabotage group," said one of the men, described by the SBU as a Russian soldier.
"They wanted to, like, scare (people) with that dam.
"It didn't go according to plan, and (they did) more than what they planned for."
The SBU said it had opened a criminal investigation into war crimes and what it called 'ecocide'.
"The interception by the SBU confirms that the Kakhovskaya HPP (Hydro-electric Power Plant) was blown up by a sabotage group of the occupiers," the security agency said in a statement.
"The invaders wanted to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam and staged a man-made disaster in the south of our country."
On Friday, a US official revealed an American satellite had picked up heat signatures consistent with an explosion moments before the dam collapsed, the New York Times reported.
The Kremlin has consistently blamed Ukraine for the disaster, without providing any evidence. It has yet to respond to the SBU's claims.
Vitalli, who continues to deal with the consequences of the blast, is dismissive of Moscow's claims.
"They say a lot, the Russians. But let's face it, who controlled the HPP? The Russians," he says.
"There is no way you can blow it up from outside, only from the inside. It must be controlled. Here are all the answers to the questions."
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