The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, seemingly by Russian forces, is being called the largest man-made disaster in Europe since Chernobyl in 1986, unleashing a flood of water across the war zone and putting more than 80 settlements, and 16,000 people, in danger.

Regrettably, the deliberate demolition of dams in war is far from uncommon; this is not the first time Ukraine has suffered so devastatingly.

The decision of Josef Stalin’s secret police to blow up the Zaporizhzhia dam in 1941 – only 150 kilometres away from Kakhovka and now the site of the synonymous nuclear power plant – is believed to have killed somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 people.

It was motivated by the same intention: to stall the enemy advance. Indeed, the timing of Tuesday’s attack on Kakhovka can be no coincidence, impeding the Ukrainian counter-offensive just 24 hours after Kyiv began probing various points across the front.

In 1941, the demolition was apocalyptic. “People were screaming for help. Cows were mooing, pigs were squealing. People were climbing on trees”, one survivor recalled.

Early reports suggest there are few human casualties from Tuesday’s attack, but thousands of animals will have perished, and the environmental consequences will be felt for decades.

There are other examples of man-made floods intended to impede an army.

Perhaps the most destructive and long-lasting was in 1938, when the Chinese destroyed dykes along the Yellow River as part of their scorched-earth strategy to hamper the Japanese. It worked, but at a terrible cost: somewhere between 30,000-90,000 drowned, with as many as half a million dying from its after-effects, especially famine. The dykes were not repaired until 1947.