Criticism of Putin: “Getting no answers on how to take care of the oil” • Appeals for international help
Russian volunteers are critical of how the authorities are managing the clean-up work after the large oil spill just over a week ago. Thousands of tonnes of oil spilled after a tanker capsized during a storm.
– We ask a lot of questions about how to take care of the oil but we don’t get any answers, says a volunteer to the Reuters news agency.
On December 15, two Russian tankers, Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239, ran aground in Kertsunder near the Crimean Peninsula during a storm. The ships together had a load of 9,200 tons of fuel oil and 40 percent is estimated to have leaked into the sea. Since then, social media has been filled with photos and videos of Russian beaches and birds covered in black oil.
Authorities say they are working “day and night” to clean up the sticky oil from the beaches, but Russian volunteers paint a different picture.
– We are appealing for help. Local authorities are overstaffed and lack the necessary resources. The only resources they have are ordinary people with shovels, says one woman.
Requires international assistance
In a video message posted online, a group of volunteers is demanding that Putin turn to the international community for help with the cleanup effort. The activists are also critical of the fact that the authorities did not declare a national state of emergency, but only at a local level.
– This release is bigger than anything we can remember before in the Black Sea. Nevertheless, there is no complete information about its size and consequences, researcher Eugene Smirnov told the newspaper The Moscow Times.
On Monday, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry announced that more than 17,000 tons of oil-contaminated sand had accumulated along the coast. But at the same time, environmental activists are reporting mass deaths among dolphins that were probably caused by the oil spill.
The oil is leaking from the bags
Over the weekend, another hundred volunteers arrived to help collect the oil-soaked sand and put it in plastic bags.
– We see that the oil is leaking from the bags. We ask a lot of questions about how to take care of the oil, but we don’t get any answers, says a volunteer to the Reuters news agency.