Russia declares federal emergency over Black Sea oil spill

Authorities in Russia declared a federal state of emergency Thursday in response to the oil spill along the Black Sea coast that local and regional emergency services, aided by thousands of volunteers, have struggled to clean up over the past week.

“Yesterday, together with all my colleagues, we discussed the situation and by decision of the leader (President Vladimir Putin) it will be assigned the status of a federal emergency,” Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-backed leader of annexed Crimea. , was quoted as said by Interfax.

Later Thursday, Russia’s Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov convened an emergency commission to formalize the decision, allowing federal funds to be allocated to deal with the aftermath of the oil spill.

The decision comes a day after the southern Krasnodar region declared a regional state of emergency amid confused clean-up efforts by local authorities. Residents have criticized the operation, citing insufficient staff and equipment for the unfolding environmental disaster.

The spill, which occurred on December 15, was caused when two Russian-flagged oil tankers were damaged during a storm, releasing thousands of tons of heavy fuel oil, known as mazut, into the Black Sea. Emergency officials reported Monday that approximately 55 kilometers (34 miles) of coastline has been contaminated.

Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, a scientist who heads the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Water Problems Institute and served as Russia’s environment minister from 1991 to 1996, said Wednesday that at least 200,000 tons of soil had been contaminated with fuel oil along the Black Sea coast after the tanker accident near the Kerch Strait.

“It will grow. There is no doubt about it, because the fuel oil remains in the sea and in quite large quantities,” Danilov-Danilyan said during a press conference. “It will continue to wash up on the cleaned coast. It will have to be cleaned another or the third time. We have to prepare for that.”

He also criticized the lack of equipment deployed and the reliance on untrained, unequipped volunteers.

“There are no bulldozers, no trucks. Virtually no heavy machinery,” he said. “Volunteers only have shovels and useless plastic bags that tear. While the bags are waiting to finally be collected, storms come and they end up back in the sea. It is unthinkable!”

Danilov-Danilyan warned that the affected communities along the Black Sea coast may not be able to welcome tourists in the spring and summer due to the high level of pollution in the water and on the beaches.

“We don’t have many places with warm beaches in the country. Almost none of the main ones disappear and it is very difficult to say now for how long: maybe for a season,” he said.

At his annual press conference last week, Putin blamed the oil tanker captains for the disaster, claiming they ventured out to sea without permission.

AFP contributed reporting.