Heavy fuel oil from sunken Russian tankers washed up on the coast of the Azov Sea in the Zaporizhzhia region
On 11 January, heavy fuel oil from Russian tankers that sank in the Kerch Strait in December washed up on the coast of the Azov Sea in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, the occupation administration of the region reported.
At the same time, the occupation administrations of the parts of the Donetsk and Kherson regions, which also have access to the Sea of Azov, announced that no pollution had been detected on the territory under their control.
According to the Russian Zaporizhzhia News Agency (ZAN), 14.5 km of the Berdiansk Spit and 5 square metres of the Peresyp Spit near the resort of Kyrylivka have been contaminated.
Screenshot from Google Maps
On 12 January, ZAN reported that “the collection of oil fragments” had been completed in Kyrylivka, and that a third of the contaminated part of the coast had been cleaned in Berdiansk. According to the report, 200 people and 24 pieces of equipment were involved in the collection of fuel oil. The news message did not contain photographs from the scene.
On the same day, the ZAN published an application from the local youth organisation Young South for volunteers who would like to join “environmental missions”.
Earlier, Russian media in the occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions claimed that students were sent to work on the clean-up of the fuel oil spill on the Black Sea coast in the Krasnodar Krai in Russia.
At the same time, in Russia, volunteers appealed to the authorities and the management of the Russian state railway to provide at least discounts on railway tickets for those wishing to come to help clean up the coast and save thousands of birds from fuel oil poisoning.
The ZAN reports did not contain any information on the impact of fuel oil on local fauna.
Two Russian tankers with 9.2 tonnes of fuel oil sank on 15 December 2024. The fuel oil from them first washed up on the beaches of the Anapa resort in Russia two days after the accident.
At the end of December, fuel oil began to wash up on the coast of occupied Crimea.