Long stretches of Russia’s Black Sea coast are covered in spilled oil following the sinking of two Russian tankers over the weekend, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned of an “environmental disaster.”
Videos geolocated by CNN show dark waves dragging low-quality heavy fuel, known as mazut, towards the beaches of Russia’s Krasnodar region, near the Kerch Strait, between Russia and occupied Crimea.
In one video, you can see a bird with wings covered in oil, squawking in distress as it sits on the sand and is hit by waves, unable to lift its wings to fly.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, criticized Moscow for sending “old and poorly maintained” boats into stormy conditions.
“These boats were almost 50 years old. They should not be in operation, especially in this part of the waters and this season. Right now, our sea is facing another environmental disaster caused by Russia,” Zelensky said on Tuesday (17).
Ambrey, a maritime security company, reported that one of the tankers was carrying 4,300 tons of mazut. The company stated that these Soviet-era boats “have broken down and sunk repeatedly in recent years during bad weather,” citing the sinking of an oil tanker while at anchor in 2021. Ambrey also said that Russia was having difficulty replacing its aging fleet. due to Western sanctions.
Zelensky claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “uses these tankers to finance his war” by shipping oil from the Black Sea.
Veniamin Kondratiev, governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region, said efforts to clean up oil spills that had washed ashore were being hampered by stormy weather.
“The weather is complicating the situation, the storm at sea does not subside, so it is difficult to predict how long it will take to completely clear the coast,” Kondratiev said in a Telegram post on Tuesday. Previously, he had claimed that the oil had reached dozens of kilometers off the Russian coast.
Videos geolocated by CNN show that a beach near Anapa, north of the city of Novorossiysk, was flooded with oil. “Residents say the smell is terrible,” Russian ecologist Zhora Kavanosyan wrote on Telegram.
In a speech before the Joint Expeditionary Force, a northern European military alliance led by the United Kingdom, which met on Tuesday in the Estonian capital Tallinn, Zelensky called on the international community to sanction the “tanker fleet in the shadows.” from Russia.
“This will not only cut off Russia’s war financing, it will also protect nature,” he said.
This content was originally published in Russian Black Sea beaches are flooded with oil after tanker sinking on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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