Oil spill off Russian coast contaminates 50 km of Black Sea beaches

The oil spill off the Russian coast has contaminated 50 km of beaches along the Black Sea after two tankers carrying tonnes of oil were damaged in a storm. Moscow on Wednesday began a wider cleanup operation to mitigate the effects of the spillage.

Russia’s emergencies ministry said Wednesday it was working on cleaning up 49 kilometres (30 miles) of beaches from the resort of Anapa north to the port of Temryuk and patrolling a total of 70km of beaches.

According to a report by TASS, satellite images showed that oil continued to leak out of the wrecked and sunken tankers with strong winds pushing the oil towards southern Russia’s beaches.

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Last week, a storm wrecked two oil tankers with one of them splitting in half and another one severely damaged but was running aground. One crew member died from hypothermia and 26 others were rescued from the damaged tankers, the Russian government said.

The number of volunteers and emergency workers “has increased to 2,700”, the emergency situations ministry said Wednesday.

They were shovelling up black oil from beaches and removing it in plastic sacks and digger trucks.

It said they had collected about 80 tonnes of oil and cleaned up more than eight kilometres (five miles) of beach.

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Beach town declares emergency

A resort town off the coast of the Black Sea has declared an emergency after oil spilled from two damaged tankers and washed up along the shoreline.

“Anapa is in a state of emergency due to the oil products spill,” the local mayor’s office said on Telegram, adding that “an operation to eliminate the consequences is underway”.

The town of Anapa houses about 90,000 people and is located in the southern Krasnodar region close to the Crimean peninsula.

The regional minister for emergency situations, Sergei Shtrikov, on Tuesday said fuel dispersed over at least 30 kilometres (19 miles) of beach, contaminating the coastline.

Apart from Anapa, authorities have also declared emergencies in four smaller towns.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova appealed for volunteers on her Telegram channel, saying “Anapa is battling the oil spill and trying to save beaches. Those famous beaches with golden sand that hundreds of thousands tourists flock to each year”.

Ukraine calls for sanctions against tankers

Meanwhile, Ukraine, which has sounded alarms about the oil spill-off causing massive environmental distress, has called for sanctions on the Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239 oil tankers.

Mykhailo Podolyak from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said, “It is now obvious that any sanctions against the Russian tanker fleet are always useful, but they are all too late.”

He added, “The accidents on two rusty vessels in the #Kerch Strait resulted in another large-scale environmental disaster of our war. Thousands of tons of fuel oil spilled … causing tragic damage to the natural systems of the #Azov and Black Seas.”

Podolyak said that given the age of the tankers, they should have never been deployed in a storm.

With inputs from AFP