MADRID Jan. 11 () –
The fuel oil spill caused by the sinking of two Russian ‘Volgoneft’ oil tankers in mid-December off the Crimean peninsula has already reached the coasts of the Sea of Azov, specifically to Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia under Russian control, 100 kilometers north of the narrow.
On board the two ships there were about 9,200 tons of fuel oil. One of the ships sank, while the other suffered serious damage. Russian authorities believe that 2,400 tons have already ended up in the sea, according to the most conservative estimates.
“Fuel oil has reached our beaches,” acknowledged the deputy and director of the Berdiansk commercial sea port, Vladimir Stelmachenko. Cleaning services have collected at least one ton of contaminated sand and the “saturation” of fuel oil in the area “is quite high,” he said in comments collected by the Russian agency TASS.
Since what Russian President Vladimir Putin described at the time as an “environmental catastrophe,” the territories of Krasnodar, Crimea and Sevastopol have been under a state of local emergency.
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