Russian tankers near Crimea are being destroyed one by one, Kremlin's losses are rapidly increasing

Last week, two Russian tankers suffered a disaster in the Kerch Strait. As of today, it is known that at least 3,000 tons of fuel oil have leaked, and oil stains have reached the beaches of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Environmentalists do not rule out the threat to the waters and coastline of Ukraine.

RBC-Ukraine says that On the morning of December 15, near Cape Takil in the southern part of the Kerch Strait, two Russian oil tankers, Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, suffered disasters with an interval of about an hour and a half. Both vessels, carrying more than 9,000 tons of fuel oil, sustained severe damage due to a storm, with wave heights reaching 2 meters and wind speeds of 24 m/s.

After the accident, the tankers ran aground near the Taman area. In one of the videos published on social media, one of the tankers is seen literally breaking in half.

As a result of the accident, one sailor died, and 26 others were rescued. The official version states that the accident occurred due to crew errors and excessive stress on the hulls. The accident led to the spill of petroleum products in the waters of the Kerch Strait and, likely, to the largest environmental disaster in the Black Sea.

The exact amount of fuel oil that ended up in the water is unknown. The Russian government claims it was a partial spill. The Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimates the spill at 3,000 tons.

It seems that the storm pushed oil stains from the occupied Crimea towards the Russian shores. On the morning of December 17, they reached the coast of Krasnodar Krai, and photos and videos of oil stains on the beaches of Anapa appeared online. The city authorities declared a state of emergency, and similar measures were implemented in the settlement of Blagoveshchenskaya and several communities in the neighboring Temryuk district.

Public pages are reporting about the "black, black tide" in the Black Sea. Throughout the night, the oil stains continued to wash up on the shores of Kuban, and according to eyewitnesses, on some beaches, the fuel oil is not in patches, but in a continuous layer 30 cm thick. Birds covered in oil have also been found along the coastline, unable to fly.

It should be noted that on December 17, in the area of the Kavkaz port, another tanker, Volgoneft-109, signaled distress due to a crack in the hull. The vessel was carrying 4,000 tons of fuel oil, and due to the accident, the integrity of the tanks was compromised. However, according to Russian media, no new spill occurred.

Russian tankers suffered an accident because they violated navigation rules and went to sea despite a strong storm, said a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Navy, Dmytro Pletenchuk.

"The weather conditions at that time were not ones under which they could be in open sea... As usual, the Russians violated everything they could violate," he emphasized.

According to him, the storm season is currently ongoing in the Black and Azov Seas and will end by mid-spring. It will be difficult to clarify all the circumstances of the incident before then. Moreover, these are old tankers, over 50 years old, which further confirms that the transportation of oil products is more important to Moscow than ensuring safety standards, Pletenchuk added. To date, the Ukrainian side has recorded nearly 7,000 environmental crimes.