An emergency response force arrived in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region on Sunday, as an oil spill in the Kerch Strait from two storm-hit oil tankers continues to spread a month after its outbreak. first detection, authorities said.
Posted at 11:28 p.m.
The task force, which includes Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov, was set up after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on authorities to step up the response to the oil spill, calling it “the one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.”
Kurenkov said “the most difficult situation” had developed near the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, where fuel oil continues to flow into the sea from the damaged part of the tanker. Volgoneft-239.
The remaining oil would be pumped out of the tanker’s stern, Kurenkov said, according to Russia’s official RIA Novosti news agency.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said Saturday that more than 155,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil had been collected since oil spilled from two tankers during a storm four weeks ago in the Strait of Kerch, which separates the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula from the Krasnodar region.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhia, a Ukrainian city partially occupied by Russia, said Saturday that fuel oil, a heavy, low-quality petroleum product, had reached the Berdyansk Spit, about 145 kilometers north of the Strait of Russia. Kerch. It contaminated an area 14.5 kilometers long, the governor of Crimea, Yevgeny Balitsky, installed by Moscow, wrote on Telegram.
-Russian-appointed officials in Moscow-occupied Crimea announced a regional state of emergency last weekend after oil was detected off the coast of Sevastopol, the peninsula’s largest city, about 250 kilometers from the strait from Kerch.
In response to Vladimir Putin’s call for action, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi accused Russia of “only beginning to show its so-called ‘concern’ after the scale of the catastrophe has become too obvious to conceal its terrible consequences.”
“Russia’s practice of first ignoring the problem, then admitting its inability to resolve it, and finally leaving the entire Black Sea region alone with the consequences is further proof of its international irresponsibility,” he said. supported Mr. Tykhyi on Friday.
The Kerch Strait is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the Inland Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. It was also a key point in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine following Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of attempting to illegally take control of the area. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, last month described the oil spill as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions against Russian oil tankers.
