When Nikolai, a 28-year-old volunteer, stepped onto the beach on Russia’s Black Sea coast wearing protective clothing on New Year’s Eve, he was swamped by a thick film of oil and almost collapsed.
He and other volunteers were tasked with shoveling oil-soaked sand, but “it was too big,” he said.
Two weeks into the new year and four weeks after the oil spill, President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged the scale of the disaster and dispatched top officials to deal with Russia’s largest oil spill in years. The incident has polluted some of the country’s most popular beaches.
The oil was leaked from two aging Russian tankers that were damaged in a storm in the Kerch Strait on December 15.
The disaster in the strait between the Crimean peninsula and mainland Russia has raised questions about whether the ships are part of a so-called shadow fleet used by Moscow to evade sanctions on its oil industry, sometimes using vessels in poor condition.
One of the ships, the Volgoneft-212, was split in half and sank, killing one crew member. The other ship, Volgoneft-239, ran aground near Taman Port. The two ships were carrying a combined 9,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, and authorities are now not only cleaning up the coast but also working to contain further leaks from the stranded ship.
Russian officials initially claimed the spill had been contained, but reports of floating oil and tar-covered birds emerged from Russia’s Black Sea coast shortly after the disaster.
On Sunday, the government said it would allocate another 1.5 billion rubles (about $15.3 million) from reserve funds for cleanup efforts. Three days ago, Putin ordered a report on the state of Russia’s tanker fleet and asked the deputy prime minister to review Russia’s legislation on sea and river oil transport and study “cleaning up similar disasters,” his press office said.
Last week, the Ukrainian navy warned that the spilled oil could reach Ukraine’s Black Sea coast near Odessa and Mykolaiv, but Ukraine’s Environment Ministry said a day later that it saw no direct threat.
Nicola is one of hundreds of volunteers involved in the cleanup. As a Moscow entrepreneur, he reviewed the information in photos 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 returning home, he said he spent a week shoveling the oil that washed ashore. He asked that his last name not be used because he fears he could lose state contracts.
Individuals and businesses have chipped in to provide some volunteers with protective clothing and some basic equipment, but the task is daunting.
“I saw the photos before I arrived,” Nikolai said. “Yes, it looks bad – but when you see it in real life, it’s different. You pick up the shovel and dig out that black glob of oil and it feels like a drop in the ocean.
Nikolai said the coastal air was filled with thick oil fumes and he felt dizzy and weak after walking there without wearing a respirator.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said this week that cleanup teams have been responding to the oil spill along nearly 500 miles of coastline, collecting more than 160,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil and 25 tons of “oil-containing liquids.”
But Greenpeace Ukraine said the spill had the potential to become a “long-term environmental disaster”, criticizing Russia’s slow response and warning of a deadly impact on Black Sea marine life.
Environmentalists say spills are particularly difficult to clean up because of the cargo the tankers carry. Heavy fuel oil, unlike ordinary crude oil, does not stay on the surface of the water, but sinks to the bottom.
“If it is not removed from the surface immediately, it will have to wait until it is biodegraded by marine microorganisms,” said Natalia Gorzak, director of Greenpeace Ukraine. “This could take decades.”
Russian independent environmentalist and hydrogeologist Georgy Kavanosyan, who arrived at the site two days after the spill, said the lack of immediate response meant large amounts of contaminated sand would need to be shoveled out, essentially destroying Some of the beaches around Anapa.
“The oil started sinking into the sand in the first few days because there were not enough rescuers there,” Mr. Kavanaugh said.
Satellite images released by Mr Kavanaugh showed two elongated stains near the stranded tanker, indicating a new oil spill from the tanker after two small earthquakes struck the area over the weekend.
“That ship is a time bomb,” he said. “The most important thing now is pumping out the oil and extracting the vessel.”
Officials reported that as of last Monday, they had collected most of the oil from the spill.
When Putin finally spoke out about the disaster, he described it as “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.”
Putin ordered the dispatch of senior officials to oversee the efforts. A working group set up this month invited several ministers to develop plans to clean up and rebuild and dismantle the tanker.
The long-term impact of the oil spill on wildlife remains to be seen.
At least 58 dolphins have been found dead so far, the Delphi Dolphin Rescue and Research Center said in a statement on Saturday. On Friday, the organization sent a team out to sea to search for the sunken tanker and confirmed reports that oil was still seeping from the tanker.
“The entire route is contaminated,” it said. “We are deeply saddened and alarmed that the common bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises were swimming in a slick of oil and a small amount of fuel just five kilometers from the coast.”
Experts say volunteers captured and cleaned at least 6,000 oil-covered birds, but many are unlikely to survive. According to Greenpeace Ukraine, the spill could kill tens of thousands of local birds.
Russian oil companies are increasingly turning to older tankers that are not regulated or insured by Western companies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials said the two 50-year-old tankers were part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged after Western countries took economic measures to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine.
But Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has written several articles about the Shadow Fleet, said the ships were “ramshackle old tankers” that lacked some of the characteristics of the Shadow Fleet ships, which typically operate in the Baltic Sea. operations and sailing in the Baltic Sea.
According to the state-run news agency RIA Novosti, both tankers involved in the spill belong to Russia, and one of them has had its license revoked and should not be allowed to sail.
Questions have also been raised about why tankers originally built for river navigation were allowed to sail at sea during winter storms.
Cassandra Winograd Reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.
