Ukraine has called on the international community to take action against Russia’s sanctions-busting oil fleet, after an ageing tanker sank in the Black Sea, causing a major environmental disaster.
The Russian cargo ship, Volgoneft-212, broke in half during a heavy storm off the coast of occupied Crimea on Sunday. A second tanker, Volgoneft-239, got into difficulties in the same area. It eventually ran aground near the port of Taman at the south end of the Kerch strait.
The two boats were carrying more than 9,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. According to satellite data, about 3,000 tonnes had leaked out. “Unfortunately some tanks were damaged. The remaining ones are sealed,” a marine scientist, Sergei Stanichny, told the Russian news agency Tass, confirming the spill.
A rescue operation involving tug boats and two helicopters was launched on Sunday. Video footage showed the bow of the snapped boat sticking vertically out of the water. Crew members stood on the bridge wearing lifejackets. One sailor died and 11 were taken to hospital with hypothermia.
Ukraine accused the Kremlin of recklessness and of violating basic operating rules. On Monday, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on social media that the pollution was the worst this century in the Black Sea region, and the second worst ever.
“It is now obvious that any sanctions against the Russian tanker fleet are always useful, but they are all too late,” he posted.
“The accidents on two rusty vessels in the #Kerch Strait resulted in another large-scale environmental disaster of our war. Thousands of tons of fuel oil spilled ... causing tragic damage to the natural systems of the #Azov and Black Seas.”
Podolyak said the tankers were built more than 50 years ago and should never have been used in winter storms. He added that they belonged to a 1,000-strong shadow fleet used by Russia to export oil and to dodge western sanctions since its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Most boats were “hopelessly outdated”, Podalyak said, alleging that they had “fictitious insurance policies”, hid their real owners and “overloaded” oil at sea. Further large-scale accidents were “statistically inevitable”, and the cost of clean-up operations would fall on affected neighbouring countries.
The adviser called for “the most stringent sanctions” against the vessels and people associated with them. He said states should prohibit their entry into territorial and international waters and outlaw “the transhipment of Russian oil”. Tankers should be required to have proper protection and indemnity insurance, he said.
On Monday the EU adopted a new round of sanctions against Russia in response to its war on Ukraine. It added 52 vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet, bringing the total to 79. Tougher measures were also taken against several Chinese entities, the EU commission said.
Separately, Norway said it was allocating $242m to boost Ukraine’s small navy and to help it deter Russian threats coming from the Black Sea. The cash would help protect Ukraine’s population from missile attacks and safeguard the exports of grain from Odesa and other ports, the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said.
Ukraine lost three quarters of its naval assets in 2014 when Russian special forces seized the Crimean peninsula and took control of the Kerch strait. Since 2022, however, Kyiv has used marine drones to sink some of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which has relocated from occupied Sevastopol to the port of Novorossiysk.
According to Greenpeace the two stricken tankers were on their way to deliver fuel to the Russian navy. They set off from the river port of Volgograd 12 days ago with traffic location systems switched off, and were due to deliver their cargo in Kerch, on Crimea’s eastern coast.
“Any oil or petrochemical spill in these waters has the potential to be serious. It is likely to be driven by prevailing wind and currents and in the current weather conditions is likely to be extremely difficult to contain,” said Paul Johnson, the head of Greenpeace’s research laboratories at the University of Exeter.
“If it is driven ashore, then it will cause fouling of the shoreline. It will be extremely difficult to clean up.”
