An emergency task force arrived in Russia's southern Krasnodar region on Sunday as an oil spill in the Kerch Strait from two tankers affected by the storm continues to spread a month after being detected by first time, officials said.
The task force, which includes Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov, was created after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on authorities to step up the response to the spill, calling it “one of the environmental challenges most serious that we have faced in recent years. .”
Kurenkov said “the most difficult situation” developed near the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, where fuel continues to leak into the sea from the damaged part of the Volgoneft-239 tanker.
Kurenkov was quoted by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the remaining oil will be pumped from the stern of the tanker.
The Emergencies Ministry said on Saturday that more than 155,000 tonnes of contaminated sand and soil had been collected since two oil tankers spilled during a storm four weeks ago in the Kerch Strait, which separates the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula from the region. from Krasnodar.
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Russian-based officials in Ukraine's partially Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region said Saturday that the mazut, a heavy, low-quality oil product, had reached the Berdyansk Spit, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the strait. from Kerch. It contaminated an area 14 and a half kilometers (9 miles) long, Moscow-based governor Yevgeny Balitsky wrote on Telegram.
Russian-appointed officials in Moscow-occupied Crimea announced a regional emergency last weekend after oil was detected off the coast of Sevastopol, the peninsula's largest city, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Kerch Strait.
Responding to Putin's call to action, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi accused Russia of “beginning to demonstrate its so-called 'concern' only after the scale of the disaster became too obvious to conceal.” its terrible consequences.”
“Russia's practice of first ignoring the problem, then admitting its inability to solve it, and ultimately leaving the entire Black Sea region alone with the consequences is further proof of its international irresponsibility,” Tykhyi said on Friday.
The Kerch Strait is a major global shipping route that provides passage from the Azov Inland Sea to the Black Sea. It has also been a key point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014.
In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of trying to illegally take control of the area. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, described last month's oil spill as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian oil tankers.
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