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Officials in southern Russia were forced to begin mass evacuations of the city of Orenburg after the flood situation became “critical” due to a deluge of water from heavy rains and snowmelt accelerated by unseasonably warm temperatures.

Swollen rivers around the border areas between Russia and Kazakhstan have wreaked havoc over the past week, pushing tens of thousands of people out of their homes. Aerial photos show massive swathes of residential areas submerged.

Floodwaters continue to rise across Russia and Kazakhstan as major rivers burst their banks resulting in some of the worst flooding in decades.

In southern Russia, the Ural River reached record levels in Orenburg, a city of half a million people, where the water rose to 11.43 meters on April 12 from 10.87 meters on April 11 — nearly 2 meters above the critical mark of 9.3 meters, prompting Mayor Sergei Salmin to order the mass evacuation.

“Sirens are sounding in the city. This is not an exercise,” he said in a post on Telegram.

“The situation is critical. Do not waste time,” he added.

City authorities said they expected the flood level to reach 11.6 meters.

Thousands of people have already left Orenburg, where 12,000 houses have been flooded since last week and electricity is sporadic.

Orenburg Governor Denis Pasler, speaking during a video link with President Vladimir Putin late on April 11, said the previous record level of the Ural was 9.4 meters in 1942, during World War II.

A sharp rise in temperatures — said by some experts to be caused by climate change — has turned regular spring flooding that is common in large parts of the border region between Russia and Kazakhstan into the worst disaster in decades.

Russian Emergency Minister Aleksandr Kurenkov, meanwhile, arrived on April 12 in Orsk, one of the hardest-hit cities, after a nearby dam on the Ural River broke on three different occasions over the past week, killing at least five people.

Some 5,100 houses have been flooded in Orsk, prompting the evacuation of 2,500 people, including more than 800 children, according to authorities.

Orsk locals have even staged rare protests earlier this week over the insufficient level of compensation they were offered for damage to their property.

Farther to the northeast, in Western Siberia, sharply rising water levels on the Tobol River in the Kurgan region early on April 12 prompted the evacuation of the village of Kaminskoye, Vadim Shukov, head of regional administration, said on Telegram.

“The water level in Kaminskoye, Kurtamysh district, continues to rise. Now it is 743 cm. The increase overnight is 140 cm. The village is being evacuated,” Shukov wrote, warning floods could reach regional capital Kurgan, a city of 310,000, in the coming days.

Kurgan houses a large factory, Kurganmashzavod, that manufactures infantry fighting vehicles for the Russian military that have been used extensively in the war the Kremlin launched in February 2022 against Ukraine.

In northern Kazakhstan, some 100,000 people, including more than 36,000 children, have been evacuated, the Kazakh Emergencies Ministry said on April 12.

Before-and-after satellite imagery reveals the floodwaters that have forced thousands of residents to evacuate from the Russian city of Orsk.

Amid their protracted predicament, some inhabitants in the areas hit by the floods have been sharply critical of how authorities have been handling the crisis.

People know that “a lot of water” is coming toward our village, Nadezhda, a resident of the northern Kazakh village of Petrovka,told RFE/RL.

“No anti-flood work was carried out. The mayor didn’t do anything. People here are used to flooding, but when we heard the levels were so high and had risen over the dam, people were overwhelmed and began to panic.”

Dissatisfaction also surfaced in the western Kazakh region of Atyrau, where residents of the Zhylyoi district, frustrated by the government’s slow reaction to their predicament, staged a protest in the town of Qulsary on April 10, demanding financial compensation for their material losses.