The authorities and volunteers have organized a vast clean-up operation, but the situation continues to cause concern in the face of “an ecological catastrophe” recognized by Vladimir Putin.
The oil spill which has affected south-west Russia and annexed Crimea since mid-December, due to the sinking of two oil tankers, continues to spread with pollution detected on new beaches, the authorities announced on Thursday. On December 15, two Russian tankers, the Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239ran aground during a storm in the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea. These ships were carrying 9,200 tonnes of fuel oil, around 40% of which may have spilled into the sea.
Authorities and volunteers have organized a large-scale clean-up operation, but the situation continues to cause concern. “Two sites polluted by petroleum products have been detected in Crimea”Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said in a statement on Thursday. These places are located near the beach in the town of Kerch and, further south, near Lake Tobetchiskoe, he said.
No adequate equipment
Since the start of the oil spill, nearly 73,000 tons of contaminated sand have been removed from dozens of kilometers of beaches on the Russian coast, but in total, some 200,000 tons of soil may have been affected, according to authorities. The regional clean-up organization released images of volunteers in white overalls removing polluted sand using shovels, including in the resort town of Anapa in Russia.
In December, however, scientists estimated that volunteers did not have adequate equipment to deal with such a disaster. President Vladimir Putin acknowledged last month that it was a “ecological disaster” and his spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, estimated that the extent of the damage caused to the environment was “impossible to calculate at the moment”.
