Russians declare state of emergency in Crimea as oil spill reaches Sevastopol

(AP) — Russian-appointed officials in Moscow-occupied Crimea announced a regional emergency Saturday as oil was detected off the coast of Sevastopol, the peninsula’s largest city.

Nearly three weeks ago, fuel oil spilled from two storm-hit tankers in the Kerch Strait near eastern Crimea, about 250 kilometers from Sevastopol in the southwest of the peninsula. .

“Today a regional emergency regime was declared in Sevastopol,” regional governor Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote on Telegram.

Oil was discovered on four beaches in the area and was “quickly removed” by local authorities working together with volunteers, Razvozhaev said.

“Let me emphasize that there is no massive pollution of the coastline in Sevastopol,” he wrote.

Razvozhaev’s announcement comes after authorities in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region announced a region-wide emergency last week as fuel oil continued to wash up on the coast 10 days after one tanker ran aground and the other was damaged and adrift on December 15.

Krasnodar regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev said Friday that more than 5,000 people were still working to clean up the oil spill.

More than 86,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil have been removed along the region’s coastline since the initial spill, he wrote on Telegram.

On December 23, the ministry estimated that up to 200,000 tonnes in total may have been contaminated by mazut, a poor-quality heavy petroleum product.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the oil spill an “ecological disaster.”

The Kerch Strait, which separates the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula from the Krasnodar region, is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the Inland Sea of ​​Azov to the Black Sea.

It was also a key point in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine following Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014. In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused the Russia to attempt to illegally take control of the region. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, called last month’s oil spill a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions against Russian oil tankers.

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