Vladimir Putin criticizes his government’s “insufficient” efforts to clean up the oil spill caused by the sinking of two oil tankers
Fuel leaked from two aging Russian tankers after they sank during a storm Dec. 15 in the Kerch Strait, which lies between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and separates the peninsula. from Kerch, Crimea, from the Russian region of Krasnodar. One of the ships sank and the other ran aground. “From what I see and the information I receive, I conclude that everything that is being done to minimize the damage is clearly not yet enough,” criticized the head of the Kremlin, during the first government meeting of 2025, after more than a week of public holidays.
This public criticism, the first from the Russian president on the subject, was aimed in particular at the Minister of Emergency Situations, Alexander Kourenkov. The Russian president called for the creation of a commission responsible for mitigating the effects of the disaster.
According to Russian investigators, around 2,400 tonnes of petroleum products, out of the 9,000 or so transported, spilled into the sea last week. The oil spill mainly affected the coasts of the Russian region of Krasnodar (southwest), then also reached the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, in particular the large port city of Sevastopol, located around 250 kilometers from the site of the disaster.
Russian authorities and volunteers have since led a vast clean-up campaign, involving thousands of people, but the situation continues to cause concern. Several cetaceans, including porpoises, have been found dead in recent weeks, according to a specialized Russian NGO and the head of a group of volunteers cleaning contaminated beaches. More than 5,550 birds were collected and “saved”according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations. In total, more than 118,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil were removed from dozens of kilometers of beaches on the Russian coast, according to this source.
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