Weeks after two Russian tankers caused an oil spill in the Kerch Strait, volunteers have been cleaning up the coastline in Moscow-occupied Crimea.
Volunteers in a town in Russia-occupied Crimea are racing to clean up a contaminated beach after thousands tons of oil spilled out of two storm-hit tankers last month in the Kerch Strait.
People in the Crimean town of Kerch could be seen removing tons of sand and soil with shovels in footage released on Thursday by the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.
The two Russian ‘Volgoneft’ tankers were hit by a storm on 15 December. One of the vessels split in half and the other ran aground. Russian state news agency TASS said that the two ships were carrying almost 9,000 tons of mazut — a heavy, low-grade fuel oil product.
The sailors were evacuated, but one died from hypothermia. According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, approximately 1,500 tons of fuel oil leaked from each tanker.
In recent weeks, at least 10,000 people in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, many of them volunteers, have been helping to rescue wildlife and clean up shorelines blighted by mazut, according to Russian news reports.
Authorities in Krasnodar last week announced a region-wide emergency. On Wednesday — New Year’s Day — officials said the oil kept on surfacing on the beaches of Anapa, a popular local resort.
More than 71,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil had been removed along 56 kilometers of shoreline since the original spill, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry reported on Wednesday morning.
Some Russian media critical of the Kremlin cited Russian volunteers as saying that state support has been inadequate as they grapple with the consequences of the spill. Some said they experienced headaches, nausea and vomiting after spending hours inhaling toxic fumes, and complained of insufficient equipment and protective measures.
Others called for international specialists to be sent in, citing the scale of the spill and the likely extent of the impact. Russian President Vladimir Putin last month called the oil spill an “ecological disaster”.
The Kerch Strait separates the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula from Russia and is a key global shipping route, providing passage from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea.
It has also been a major point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of trying to illegally seize control of the area. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.
