When a 28-year-old volunteer named Nikolai stepped onto a sandy beach on Russia’s Black Sea coast in a hazmat suit just before New Year’s Eve, he was so overwhelmed by the amount of thick oil film that he almost broke down.
He and other volunteers were tasked with shoveling away the oil-drenched sand, but “the scale is just too big,” he said.
Two weeks into the new year, and four weeks after the spill, President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged the extent of the disaster and dispatched senior officials to deal with Russia’s largest oil spill in years, which has befouled some of the country’s most popular beaches.
The oil was released by two aging Russian tankers that were damaged during a heavy storm in the Kerch Strait on Dec. 15. At least 2,400 metric tons of oil spewed into the sea, Russian officials said.
The disaster in the strait, which separates the Crimean Peninsula from mainland Russia, raised questions about whether the vessels were part of the so-called shadow fleet that Moscow uses to evade sanctions on its oil industry, sometimes employing ships in shoddy conditions.
One of the vessels, the Volgoneft-212, split in half and sank, killing one crew member. The other, the Volgoneft-239, ran aground near the port of Taman. The two vessels were loaded with a total of 9,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, and the authorities are now working not only to clean up the shores, but also to try to contain additional spills from the ship that ran aground.
Russian officials originally claimed that the spill was contained, but soon after the disaster, sightings of floating oil and tarred birds were reported all along Russia’s Black Sea coast.
On Thursday, Mr. Putin ordered a report on the condition of Russia’s tanker fleet, and also asked a deputy prime minister to review Russian legislation covering oil shipments by sea and river and to look into the “scientific advances on the cleanup of similar disasters,” his press office said.
Last week, the Ukrainian Navy warned that oil from the spill could reach Ukraine’s Black Sea coast near Odesa and Mykolaiv, but Ukraine’s Environmental Ministry said a day later that it saw no immediate threat.
Nikolai was among hundreds of volunteers who have lent a hand to the cleanup. A Moscow entrepreneur, he had viewed information from photographs and videos posted by local residents and officials, and traveled to the resort town of Anapa as the new year approached.
In a phone interview with The New York Times after he returned home, he said he had spent a week shoveling away the oil that was washing onto the shore. He asked that his surname not be used because he fears he might lose out on state contracts.
Individuals and businesses chipped in to provide some volunteers with hazmat suits and some basic equipment, but the task was daunting.
“I had seen the photos before I arrived,” Nikolai said. “Yes, it looked bad — but it’s different when you see it in real life. You take the shovel and scoop out…
2025-01-26 05:01:26
Source from www.nytimes.com