Oil leaked from the two tankers that capsized off the coast of Russia has been found on more beaches on the annexed Crimean peninsula, Agence France-Presse reported, citing local Russian authorities, BTA reports.
Two Russian tankers – – – – were badly damaged in a storm last month in the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea and lies between Crimea and Russia's Krasnodar region.
“Pollution has been detected in two places in Crimea,“ Russia's Emergencies Ministry said on Tuesday. The contamination was found on a beach in the city of Kerch and further south near Lake Tobechik.
Almost 73,000 tons of contaminated sand have been removed from dozens of kilometers of beaches on the Russian coast after the spill, the ministry said.
A total of about 200,000 tons of sand and soil may have been contaminated, officials said.
The regional headquarters responsible for the cleanup posted photos of volunteers in white protective clothing shoveling contaminated sand from beaches, including in the popular resort of Anapa. The headquarters said 2,100 birds have been rescued so far.
According to Ukraine, the spill is the “largest in the Black Sea region in the 21st century“ and Moscow is using ships that are unsuited to the harsh winter conditions.
Due to Western sanctions, Russia uses a so-called shadow fleet of mostly obsolete tankers to export its fuel around the world.
“The vast majority of the more than 1,000 tankers in Russia's “shadow fleet” are hopelessly outdated, have fake insurance policies, conceal their true owners and often transfer their oil cargo while at sea. More large-scale incidents are statistically inevitable,” Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said last month.