‘Blackened feet and potential poisonings’ Russia’s oil-polluted Black Sea beaches haven’t stopped regional officials from welcoming vacationers
Russia’s Black Sea beaches in Anapa have been declared unfit for swimming following last December’s oil spill in the Kerch Strait. Four months on, oil continues to wash ashore, and piles of contaminated sand lie exposed outside the city — even as children are sent to summer camps and officials prepare for the tourist season, according to RFE/RL’s North Caucasus service, Kavkaz.Realii. Volunteers and environmentalists, meanwhile, report new pollution, health complaints, and unresolved waste disposal issues. Meduza shares an abridged translation of the outlet’s reporting.
On December 15, 2024, two Russian oil tankers sank during a storm in the Kerch Strait, spilling at least 2,400 tons of heavy fuel oil into the Black Sea. In January, Russia’s Transport Ministry confirmed that the spill involved Mazut-100 fuel oil, which remains viscous even at temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit).
The wrecks of both tankers remain on the seafloor. Plans to recover the bow of one of the vessels aren’t scheduled until June — after the start of the summer tourist season. On April 19, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, reported that 141 beaches in Anapa and nine in nearby Temryuk don’t meet sanitary standards and can’t be used for recreation.
But even though oil continues to wash up onshore, regional officials have begun to talk about the return of vacationers. Both federal and regional children’s recreation programs have made plans in Anapa. One health resort there plans to host about 3,000 children this season. The facility claims that the sand on its beach is “clean enough.” Another resort in the village of Vityazevo, near Anapa, is preparing to receive children with respiratory conditions. Treatment guidelines call for swimming in the sea.
“Children’s camps in Anapa have always existed and will continue to operate,” a volunteer from Anapa told Kavkaz.Realii, speaking on condition of anonymity. “These health resorts get government contracts. It’s just that the format might change — no beaches or sea, just swimming pools [including those with seawater].”
Experts have raised concerns about the quality of the shoreline cleanup. In the settlement of Voskresenskii, where sand from the coastline has been dumped since December, residents have complained of a persistent fuel oil smell and health issues. In April, they recorded a video appeal to Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev demanding that the waste be removed.
“We’re heading into the warm season with toxic fumes and health risks that are hard to measure,” one resident said. “There are elderly people here, children — they’re all being exposed to this polluted sand.”
Regional officials say the delay is due to a facility in Rostov refusing to accept the waste despite a signed contract. All disposal sites within Krasnodar Krai are at capacity, forcing authorities to hastily “optimize” existing industrial areas to hold the material.
Volunteer cleanup efforts have also continued, but not without problems. In February, a fire destroyed a coordination center in Anapa, wiping out supplies and equipment. That same month, two people died during cleanup efforts: 17-year-old student Alexander Komin and rescue diver Semyon Lugovoy. The causes of death haven’t been publicly disclosed.
The volunteer from Anapa, who’s worked along the coast since the disaster, said the medical system for workers doesn’t adequately track injuries or health effects. “If someone gets hurt or poisoned by the oil, it’s very difficult to prove,” she said. “There’s no baseline health screening, no follow-up. Without that, you can’t prove the harm happened during cleanup work. And without proof, there’s no chance of compensation or state-funded treatment.”
With warmer weather, she said, the risks to volunteers will grow due to increased fumes from the oil. The number of volunteers has already fallen since late February.
Dozens of dolphins and hundreds — possibly tens of thousands — of seabirds have already died as a result of the spill. As temperatures rise, there are growing concerns that heavy oil fractions could begin surfacing from the seabed. According to Russian Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov, the cleanup of Anapa’s coastal zone will not be complete until summer 2026.
In the meantime, the region is entering peak tourist season with ongoing oil contamination, polluted sand, and a new problem: a landfill fire near Novorossiysk, just down the coast, has been burning for more than a month.
‘The government didn’t care’
The critical mistake came in the first hours after the tankers sank, says Vladimir Slivyak, co-founder of the environmental group Ecodefense. “When there’s a major oil spill, the first 24 hours are everything. If you can’t contain it then, the damage becomes far harder to manage,” he said. “And in this case, no one did anything — not in the first 24 hours, not even in the first weeks.”
A local ecologist who specializes in environmental crime agrees. “You really can’t describe the authorities’ actions as adequate. For the first five days after the disaster, they said almost nothing and tried to keep it quiet,” he said. “The spill happened just days before Putin’s ‘Direct Line’ [call-in show]. And when the regional governor isn’t elected but appointed from Moscow, the last thing he wants is bad press before a major federal event. So nothing was done.”
A state of emergency wasn’t declared until ten days after the spill. Until then, response efforts were left to local municipalities that lacked both the equipment and the manpower to act. “It wasn’t until social media started circulating videos of the oil that the authorities began to respond,” he added. “The federal government didn’t get involved until after New Year’s. But even then, their help didn’t fix anything. The source of the contamination — the tanker wreckage — remains on the seafloor.
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According to Slivyak, the Kremlin has largely ignored the scale of the disaster because it simply isn’t a priority. “Putin’s main focus is the war. That’s where all the money is going. An oil spill isn’t important to him. More resources — people, equipment, funding — were clearly needed. But the government didn’t care. Not until the scale of the disaster became impossible to deny, and even then, they acted like it wasn’t a big deal.”
The response now underway, Slivyak said, is far from effective. “There’s no technology that can actually solve the environmental problems they’re facing. The critical window has passed. Now they’re just doing what they can — removing a sand-oil mixture in huge volumes. And they’ll be hauling it out for a long time. They’ll dump the sand wherever they can — and in places they shouldn’t. New dumpsites will appear. Contaminants will leach into the environment, maybe even into the water supply, and eventually into food.”
Slivyak also criticized the authorities’ attitude toward the upcoming tourist season, suggesting they may try to conceal the scale of the damage. “This will be a tourist season with fuel oil, blackened feet, and potential poisonings. I expect the authorities will pressure local media to suppress any information that could scare off visitors.”
Public criticism of the government has been muted. “People won’t openly speak out,” said the ecologist. Instead, they channel their frustration into what he calls “surrogate activism” — cleaning birds, scrubbing oil off the shore. While it may not be especially effective from an ecological standpoint, he says, it’s a form of civic engagement — a way of doing something.
He added that police have monitored volunteers and pressured bloggers to avoid stoking public outrage ahead of the summer season. “The security services are watching, trying to quash any criticism. That’s why people stay quiet and focus on what they can do.”
The volunteer from Anapa told Kavkaz.Realii she won’t be going to the beach this summer — and she certainly won’t be taking her child there. “We’re staying out of the sea,” she said.
