Putin has set up a working group to mitigate the impact of the fuel spill, whose extent is still unknown.
Two Russian oil tankers with 29 crew members between them have been heavily damaged and are now leaking oil in the Black Sea, Russian authorities said on Sunday.
« Today two tankers, Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239, were damaged due to a storm in the waters of the Black Sea, » Russian state-owned news agency Tass reported.
« There are 15 people on board one ship and 14 people on the other. The damage caused an oil spill emergency, » the agency said.
In a subsequent report, TASS described the damage to the Volgoneft 212 as catastrophic: « In the conditions of the storm, the bow of the tanker was torn off. »
Unverified footage on Telegram also appears to show one of the vessels broken in half, with streaks of oil visible on the surface of the water. The incident occurred in the early hours of Sunday in the Kerch Strait waterway separating annexed Crimea and mainland Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a working group to be set up to « organize rescue operations and cleanup works after the oil spill, » his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
Two rescue tugboats and two helicopters have been dispatched. The Russian emergencies ministry said one crew member had died.
Dmytro Pletenchuk, spokesperson for the Ukraine navy, accused Russia of violating maritime operating rules. “These are quite old Russian tankers. You can’t go to sea in such a storm, » Pletenchuk said. « The Russians violated the operating rules. The result is an accident.”
Both vessels have a loading capacity of about 4,200 metric tons of oil products, according to Reuters.
This story has been updated.
