Russia’s Black Sea beaches flooded with oil from wreck of tankers

Long stretches of Russia’s Black Sea coastline are covered in oil spilled by the wreck of two Russian tankers over the weekend, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warning of an “environmental disaster.”

In one video, a bird – its wings thick with oil – is seen squawking in distress as it sits in the sand and is buffeted by waves, unable to lift its wings to fly away.

The oil spill has impacted at least 60 kilometers of coastline, Greenpeace Ukraine said Tuesday. “Several towns have declared an emergency situation. The death of birds contaminated with mazut has been recorded,” it said.

The two tankers – the Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239 – were carrying thousands of tons of fuel in the Kerch Strait when they got into peril on Sunday, with winds reaching up to 70 kph (45 mph). A video earlier this week showed the wreck of the Volgoneft 212 washed ashore about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south from the start of the Kerch Bridge in Russia.

Zelensky slammed Moscow for sending out “old, poorly maintained” vessels into stormy conditions.

“These ships were nearly 50 years old. They shouldn’t have been in operation at all, especially in this part of the waters and during this season. Right now, our sea is facing yet another environmental disaster caused by Russia,” Zelensky said Tuesday.

Ambrey, a maritime security company, said one of the tankers was carrying 4,300 tons of mazut. It said these Soviet-era vessels “have repeatedly broken up and sunk in recent years during heavy weather,” pointing to the wreck of a tanker while at anchor in 2021. Ambrey said Russia was struggling to replace its aging fleet due to Western sanctions.

Zelensky said Russian President Vladimir Putin “uses these tankers to finance his war,” shipping oil from the Black Sea.

Veniamin Kondratiev, governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region, said efforts to clean up the oil spills washed ashore were being hampered by stormy weather.

“The weather is making the situation more difficult, the storm at sea is not stopping, so it is difficult to predict how long it will take to completely clean up the coast,” Kondratiev said in a Telegram post Tuesday. He said earlier that oil had washed up along tens of kilometers of Russia’s coastline.

In an address to the Joint Expeditionary Force, a United Kingdom-led Northern European military alliance, which met Tuesday in the Estonian capital Tallinn, Zelensky called on the international community to sanction Russia’s “shadow” tanker fleet.

“Doing so will not only cut off Russia’s war funding but will also protect nature,” he said.