Skeletal remains seen after the destruction of a key Ukrainian dam last week could be of people who died in a World War II battle, historians said.
Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station on the Dnipro River on Tuesday. Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombardment in the contested area.
The dam's destruction resulted in the emptying of the vast reservoir along river. Video of the area showed mudflats littered with skeletons, The Guardian reported, though the footage could not be independently verified due to fighting in the area.
A World War II helmet was found on one skull.
Historians say some of the remains could be of people who died The Battle of the Dnipro, one of the biggest military operations of World War II. It was the Soviet army's counterattack against the German army, and involved more than 6 million troops.
The same terrain, around Nikopol and Kamianka-Dniprovska, now is at the center of Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian occupation.
The focus 80 years ago was on Nikopol, the site of metal ore mines that Adolf Hitler was determined to retain. The Germans were forced to abandon the town in February 1944.
"The losses of Soviet troops ranged from 30,000 to 60,000 people," said Andrii Solonets, a historian at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, The Guardian reported.
"The losses of German and Romanian troops were up to 20,000 people. So in theory this video showing the helmet and skull could be linked to those events."
Oleksii Kokot, an expert on German military relics in Ukraine, said that while dead Russian soldiers were buried in the ground, "dead German soldiers were just left lying in the fields … therefore, these could really be German soldiers."
Many of the German bodies were left lying in marshes, which were then submerged with the building of the Nova Kakhovka dam in 1956, The Guardian said.
Recovering the German remains would involve the German War Graves Commission, but that likely will need to wait until the current war on the Dnipro has ended.
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