Photos of a thick plume of smoke rising from a burning sea flooded the Russian internet on the evening of Oct. 6. The Afromax Rio, a 247-meter Liberian-flagged oil tanker, had been struck by a Ukrainian drone off the resort city of Sochi. Two weeks later, locals along the Black Sea coast are finding oil-covered birds, and nobody has said how much oil actually spilled.
Environmental specialists feared the worst at first. Some said the damage could exceed the 2024 spill near Anapa, which left beaches coated in heavy fuel oil and brought out thousands of volunteers.
“I would be a bad expert if I were to outline the [exact environmental] consequences right now,” one prominent environmentalist told The Moscow Times. “Why? Because it is not known how much oil has spilled as a result of this attack. And that is the main problem.”
What officials have said
Regional authorities first denied the attack had caused any spill. A week afterward, Krasnodar Governor Venyamin Kondratyev warned of a possible emergency in Gelendzhik and Novorossiysk. The regional Emergency Situations Ministry said it had “detected minor oil spills” on the shoreline near Novorossiysk, though it denied any link to the tanker.
The environmentalist, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, said the silence runs against Russian law, which “prohibits classifying information about the environment and environmental pollution.”
The damaged ship was towed to Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest Black Sea port, the day after the strike. Local campaigner Tatiana Tribat criticized the decision, pointing to the burden the city already carries.
What the images show
Satellite images analyzed by Greenpeace showed the vessel leaving a slick of around 25 square kilometers by Oct. 8. The independent monitor Prozrachny Mir spotted a slick running along the coast from Novorossiysk toward the town of Arkhipo-Osipovka, some 70 kilometers (43 miles) south, in images from Oct. 10.
Residents of Novorossiysk, Sochi and smaller towns along the tanker’s route say pollution is washing up. “Every day we receive reports [of contamination] from Yuzhnaya Ozereevka, Limanchik, Dyurso and elsewhere,” Tribat told a local newspaper. “If it wasn’t the Aframax Rio that fouled the coastline, then who is responsible for the pollution?”
Smaller than Anapa, so far
The anonymous expert said evidence from local media and volunteers suggests this spill is much smaller than the earlier disaster. In December 2024, two Russian-flagged tankers were damaged in a storm and released over 9,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, known as mazut. Pollution reached from annexed Crimea to Georgia, with Russia’s Krasnodar region hit hardest.
“Back then, hundreds, even thousands, of birds were affected. In this instance, the number is in single digits,” he said. “Back then, about 60 kilometers [37 miles] of coastline was covered in a continuous strip of fuel oil.”
That is despite the Afromax Rio being able to carry up to 100,000 metric tons of oil, nearly 10 times the combined load of the two Anapa tankers. The expert credited the fire for the gap: burning oil fouls the air, but far less ends up in the water. Some reports say crews have begun pumping the remaining oil out of the ship.
Anapa is not finished either. Authorities reopened its beaches this summer, yet satellite monitor Sky Eye found a fresh slick in July coming from the sunken bow of the Volgoneft-239 tanker in the Kerch Strait. Officials have long denied any ongoing leak there, sometimes in statements illustrated with photos of divers emerging covered in oil.
Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on vessels in the Black Sea, tankers among them, in recent months. No major spills have followed so far, the expert said, though some pollution has occurred. He added that no military strike compares with “a disaster caused by negligence of officials and vessel operators, corruption and the like,” which he said is what caused the 2024 accident.
Sources
Sources
- Regions Calling: More Questions Than Answers After Latest Black Sea…
- Greenpeace reports another huge oil slick in the Black Sea… — Meduza
