On January 9, the occupiers’ propaganda began broadcasting a portion of the Kremlin dictator’s “fateful statements” about the ecological disaster in the Black Sea after the sinking of two Russian tankers carrying fuel oil on December 15.
Putin’s statements that “it is necessary to organize a commission,” “a headquarters that would work right on the spot, and not at the local level, but that it would be headed by leaders, responsible employees from ministries and departments, who would be delegated directly to the site of the disaster” looked extremely tragicomic.
This was especially noticeable against the background of statements by the Crimean gauleiter Sergei Aksyonov and the Russia’s central propaganda from December 26 that allegedly “the fuel oil spill in the Kerch Strait was given the status of a federal emergency situation”, that is, the aggressor allegedly created the corresponding “headquarters” and “commissions” half a month ago.
However, already on December 28, the same Aksyonov announced the introduction of not a “federal”, but a “technogenic emergency situation of a regional nature”, and only on the Kerch Peninsula, and then “emergency situations” were declared by the “authorities” of occupied Sevastopol, as well as in certain areas of the captured AR of Crimea.
Just as tragicomic was Putin’s “fresh” statement that “it is necessary to think about and develop plans to raise these flooded tankers” and “stop the leaks”, and even before the summer season. Let us recall that the tanker “Volgoneft 212”, which broke apart in a storm, lies on the bottom, as does the bow of “Volgoneft 239”, the stern of which is on the rocks near the Caucasian coast.
In order to pump out the fuel oil that has hardened over three weeks, as previously proposed by the Russian authorities, it is necessary to somehow “start” the system of heating oil products on the remains of “Volgoneft 239” to liquefy them and then pump them out, and in the case of the sunken parts of the tankers, the aggressor has no solution at all: it is obvious that during attempts to raise them, the decrepit hulls of the tankers may finally fall apart.
At the same time, on January 8, Russian-controlled ecologist Georgy Kavanosyan wrote, based on satellite images, that in the Black Sea “areas have appeared … with probable accumulations of oil slick formations,” namely a large area southwest of Cape Sarych, an area in the western part of Crimea east of Cape Uret, and an area along the southern coast of Crimea from Cape Ai-Todor to Partenit.
At the same time, on January 8 and 9, Sevastopol social networks wrote that “there are many new emissions of fuel oil,” and “the old ones are covered with pebbles and sand.”
The Sevastopol residents also state, that the removal of contaminated sand and pebbles from the city’s beaches will lead to their destruction, especially after the beach coverings have been massively removed and destroyed over the past decade due to thoughtless construction, which was also acknowledged by the local “honored ecologist” Natalia Milchakova.
It is also stated that the contaminated mass is removed only from the “official” beaches, leaving hard-to-reach areas of the coast, gullies, tracts, and the like unattended. Also, in many places on the Sevastopol coast, no one removes bags of fuel oil pollution and they turn into spontaneous garbage dumps.
The same situation was noted by local residents on the coast near the village of Mirny in Western Crimea, where “they put the waste in flimsy bags, from which all this muck calmly flows out onto the clean sand.” Also in the area of the Alushta village of Utes, eyewitnesses recorded a large number of fuel oil stains in the sea, and the fuel oil spread over the surface as a slink, which contradicts the previous forecast that it would “freeze as much as possible” in cold water.
It is stated that the aggressor did not block the entrance to the Donuzlav Bay with barriers, and when fuel oil gets there, the consequences for the ecology of that maritime reservoir will be irreversible. On January 9, it was also reported from occupied Kerch that “the entire coast is in fuel oil”, and over the past three days, pollution, like “gifts from oil millionaires”, has been massively noted on the coast of the long-suffering Koktebel.
Also on January 10, the head of the Tuzlovsky Limans National Park in the Odesa Region, Ivan Rusev, noted the discovery of the first birds smeared with fuel oil, precisely as a result of the outpouring of oil products as a result of the tanker accident in the Kerch Strait. And the Crimean collaborator Oleg Zubkov admitted that 143 previously “washed” seabirds delivered from the Crimean coast have already died in his “Taigan” lion park.
Against this background, the inexhaustible sarcasm among Crimean residents was generated by the statement of the head of the All-Russian Association of Fishermen German Zverev, that supposedly there is no need “to be afraid to buy Black Sea fish.”
As a “guarantee of purity” Zverev came up with the idea of calling “constant contact with the union of fishermen of Crimea and Sevastopol.” However, stating that allegedly “trawlers catching anchovy in the Kerch Strait area left the water area a day before the storm” on December 15, Zverev admits that now “fishing is being conducted in the Sevastopol area”, that is, in the area of the current oil spills.
At the same time, “Krym.Realii” wrote that in the “recreational establishments” of the occupied peninsula “after the New Year, a fairly significant number of cancellations of reservations began and people cite the oil pollution of the water and beaches as the only reason”, and therefore no one really believes the above-mentioned “reassurances” of the Kremlin dictator.
At the same time, on January 10, the same Kavanosyan reported that a spill of oil products from the stern of the tanker “Volgоneft-239” was discovered in the Temryuk district, and “the extent of the damage is unknown,” but judging by the video he released, it is quite large-scale.
