Two Russian tankers ran aground Sunday during a storm near annexed Crimea, causing the death of a sailor and a fuel leak into the sea, authorities said. “Due to a storm in the Black Sea, two tankers, the Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239suffered an accident »declared the Russian federal agency for river and maritime transport, Rosmorretchflot.
On Telegram, she adds that this double stranding resulted in “a spill of petroleum products” and that two tugboats and two helicopters were sent as part of a rescue operation. The two tankers are in the Kerch Strait, which connects Russia to Crimea, a Ukrainian region annexed by Moscow.
On Telegram, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry reported that a member of the crew of the Volgoneft-212 had died and 12 others had been evacuated. According to this source, this ship was “damaged and stranded”while the other, whose crew consists of 14 people, was “drifting” before also running aground, “80 meters from the shore near the port of Taman”, in Krasnodar Krai, Russia.
Videos broadcast by Russian media show one end of the Volgoneft-212partly submerged and floating vertically.
Eleven evacuated sailors suffering from hypothermia were hospitalized in the city of Anapa, Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratiev said on Telegram. The evacuation of the 14 sailors still on board the second ship was suspended due to bad weather, the emergency services announced in the evening.
According to a source close to the authorities, cited by the TASS press agency, the two ships were transporting a total of nearly 9,000 tonnes of fuel oil. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the creation of a working group to ” eliminate “ this pollution at sea, announced the Kremlin.
The cause of this double grounding has not yet been clarified but two investigations have been opened to “violation of safety rules”. According to a source close to sea rescue, interviewed by the Interfax press agency, two hypotheses are possible: an error by the crew in the middle of a storm or an overload caused by the waves on these boats dating from the 1980s and designed for river or sea navigation in calm weather.
In the Kerch Strait, a rail and road bridge connects the Crimean peninsula to Russia, but it has been attacked several times by kyiv forces, in the midst of armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia. These attacks forced Moscow to find other means of supplying this peninsula, notably by sea. At the end of August, a ferry carrying fuel sank in the same strait after being the target of an attack. Ukrainian.
