Blackened shores, viscous masses carried by the current, hundreds of birds with oil-stained wings cleaned and cared for as best they could, stuck fish and poisoned porpoises, more than thirty cetaceans found dead… The videos visible on Russian social networks bear witness to the scale of the oil spill which has affected the coasts of south-west Russia and Crimea since December 15.
That day, two Russian tankers, the Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239ran aground during a storm in the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow. The two ships were carrying 9,200 tonnes of fuel oil. Officially, around 40% of this volume could have spilled into the sea.
Since then, the oil spill has continued to spread on the Russian coasts, but also in Crimea. It now reaches the city of Sevastopol, the military port of the peninsula. Up to 200,000 tonnes of soil could have been polluted, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources announced on December 27, 2024, without trying to hide the extent of the pollution. On December 19, the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, himself spoke of a “ecological disaster”.
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