As we wrote earlier, the catastrophe that occurred on December 15 in the waters of the Black Sea south of the Kerch Strait with the Russian tankers “Volgoneft-212” and “Volgoneft-239” led to the appearance of fuel oil on the Crimean shores of the Kerch Strait on December 21.
By the morning of December 23, the aggressor was forced to admit the scale of the disaster. At a meeting in Anapa, the Russia’s Minister of natural resources and environment Alexander Kozlov admitted that the fuel oil “apocalypse” is just beginning, as the “Crimean media” quote him, “if now they are talking about 14 thousand tons of emissions, then later we can talk about 200 thousand tons”, although immediately after the accident they were talking about “a maximum of 8 thousand tons”.
The aggressor’s propaganda stated that “pollution is clearly visible at Cape Takil and up to the Crimean Bridge”, and the occupiers’ “main department of the ministry of emergency situations” acknowledged the discovery, as of December 21, of fuel oil on the coast of the village of Podmayachny, as well as in the Kerch areas of the Nymphaeum Road beach, the city embankment, the “Cosmos” camp and in the areas of Kapkany, Nizhneprimorskaya and the “Yeni-Kale” fortress.
At the same time, the situation on the sparsely populated Black Sea coast of the Kerch Peninsula, where, among other things, in the protected Opuk, the occupiers’ testing grounds with closed access are located, is being kept silent by the aggressor.
Vladimir Latka, scientific director of the Russian “Whale Protection Fund”, stated that the main migration corridor of the Black and Azov Sea ecosystems – the Kerch Strait, through which all 38 species of commercial fish of the Azov and western Black Sea migrate twice a year, as well as the routes of Black Sea bottlenose dolphins and porpoises, are under threat, and a threat has arisen for the bottlenose dolphin “maternity hospital” in the Taman Bay.
Ukrainian expert Pavel Gol’din stated that fuel oil “will now be thrown out everywhere – in the strait, and in the Black Sea, and in the Azov Sea, and will be spread as much as possible. In the situation … a week after the start of the transfer, this is one of the worst scenarios, it could be worse if it then changes to the southeast, which is also possible.”
The aggressor-controlled “dolphin rescue center” “Delfa” reported the death of at least 10 dolphins as a result of the oil spill, but it is obvious that this is only the beginning of the disaster.
The occupation authorities announced on December 23 that “more than 25 tons of fuel oil were collected off the coast of Kerch,” “cleanup work is underway near Lake Tobechikske,” and allegedly “fuel oil is being extracted from the sea using special equipment,” and “vessels” “Maksim Kolosov” and “Anatoly Tkachev” were sent to the site to localize and eliminate the spills.”
At the same time, the collected “Kerch catch” of fuel oil began to be taken to a “landfill” near the city of Shchyolkine, where at least 14 tons were sent on December 22. On December 23, the occupiers announced that allegedly “a total of 60.3 tons of contaminated sand and soil were collected in Crimea, 50.6 tons were removed.”
This “landfill,” as they write on social networks, was a concrete site of the former territory of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, which was not specially prepared and not particularly protected from the repeated flow of fuel oil into local wetlands, groundwater, and into the Sea of Azov itself near the protected Kazantip.
The occupiers are also massively calling on Kerch volunteers to collect fuel oil. And if the volunteers in Anapa, stating that “people are needed, people are needed, there are not enough people. The main problem is human hands”, they say that “fuel oil smells terrible, that’s why volunteers are wearing masks”, but in Kerch neither volunteers nor “students” and “budget workers” driven to the beaches with shovels, are provided with protective equipment.
However, in Anapa social networks they write that “the channels show how everything is fine. But in reality everything is different”, and that the bags of fuel oil collected by volunteers are carried back to the sea due to the storm.
In the best case, the Kerch “liquidators” collected in the rain, could count on shovels and gloves, and one of the organizers of such a “collection” was Vitaly Semin, “noted” in a number of occupation structures, including “Lotsman-Krym”.
As Crimean residents wrote on this matter in social networks, “people without protective equipment. In the rain. Why? They should have waited a little. Or at least provide it to everyone”; “on the Institutsky beach people are collecting this fuel oil in bags… Something tells me that these bags will stand until July”.
Regarding the “special equipment”, declared by the occupiers, Kerch residents write the following: “of course, I have never seen such know-how, to use an excavator to remove fuel oil from the sea and pour it onto the embankment…” and “give me the equipment, why are people suffering by hand? Today many people felt ill, they inhaled too much. There are no respirators, no special clothing”.
Kerch residents also recall that the occupiers “a year ago during the exercises … advertised pontoon barriers against oil spills, but they are nowhere to be seen,” and that “there is no sign of the mass work of the relevant services with their numerous personnel. The “authorities” are constantly calling for volunteers.”
At the same time, the aggressor is clearly trying to make the captains of “Volgoneft-212” and “Volgoneft-239” the scapegoats, declaring their “house arrest.” However, even the Kremlin-controlled “media” have published screenshots of the correspondence of one of them, begging the port administration and ship owners to accept the ship for unloading.
On the eve of the accident, on December 14, the captain of the “Volgoneft-212” wrote to the management: “Please take VN-212 for unloading, we are heating the cargo with one boiler. Now they are taking 141, there are also problems with the boiler. They will try to take 212 after 141. Our average temperature of one boiler is 40 degrees. I am afraid it will not last long.”
Then the captain asked to accept the ship into the port, because in an hour the fuel oil could completely cool down, and the forecast promised a storm. The aforementioned “media” admit that “according to the documents, the oil products were supposed to be unloaded by November 30, but due to the weather and the queue for unloading, the fuel remained on the ship until December 15.”
As Crimean residents write on this subject in social networks, “Have you ever been at an anchorage? If you have, then you know very well that without permission or a command from the dispatcher, the captain cannot even scratch himself. He could neither anchor there on his own without permission from the dispatcher of the port of Kavkaz, nor leave on his own without permission.”
It is also stated that “they did not go out in a storm. They stood at the anchorage waiting to unload for a long time. The weather deteriorated. A storm began. The captain of the port of Kavkaz should have given the command to the captains of these ships to take shelter. This was not done. The result is known.”
At the same time, the aggressor’s propaganda, stating that “on December 17, an SOS signal was sent from the third tanker “Volgoneft-109″. The reason was a crack on the side. Fortunately, a catastrophe was avoided,” clearly keeps silent about another incident. The fact is that since December 20, oil spills have been found en masse on the Azov coast of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, where fuel oil from the Kerch Strait could not have gotten so quickly.
These 27 kilometers of pollution, from the Stepanovska Spit landscape reserve to the border with the Kherson region, including parts of the Fedotova Spit and Peresyp Spit landscape reserves, are probably related to the accident of another vessel, which the aggressor is silent about.
Therefore, the statements of propagandist Sergei Markov, broadcast by the “Crimean press”, sound extremely tragicomic that in the summer of 2025, some “streams of vacationers” will be transferred… to Mariupol.
Also, Markov, continuing the hysteria we described earlier about the “machinations of the West” and the “terrorist act” from such a “seaman” as the “first minister of state security” of the Russian terrorists in Donetsk, Andrey Pinchuk, stated that the “Western sanctions” against the “Russian shadow fleet” are allegedly to blame for the disaster.
In fact, there is no need to delve into the reasons for the sanctions, but only to recall that the ships of the “Volgoneft” type that were lost and damaged by the storm, with classification documents from such an “authoritative” structure as the “Russian Classification Society”, are in principle not intended for maritime shipping and were mercilessly exploited in conditions not intended for them solely due to the greed of their operators and the lack of control of the aggressor authorities.
As we wrote earlier, the owner of the “Volgoneft-239” tanker, “Volgatransneft”, won a tender in 2017 to transport Rosneft products “in the southern direction on the territory of Russia until 2022”; the cost of the contract for the transportation of 1.5 million tons of oil products was about 3 billion rubles.
Naturally, these funds were not spent on fleet modernization either before 2022 or later. It is obvious that this catastrophe, which was a direct consequence of the aggressor’s mismanagement, is only just unfolding and its consequences will obviously be long-term and irreversible.
