Press Release, 11.07.2026

Photo: Clean-up operations following the oil spill caused by the two Volgoneft tankers that ran into distress in the Kerch Strait on the afternoon of 15 December 2024, on the coastline at Anapa. / Photo by Yuri Bereznyuk, Kommersant

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov has sent an appeal to Prosecutor General Alexander Guzan, demanding that he disclose information on the state of the environment in the zone of the fuel oil spill in the Kerch Strait and initiate real measures to address the consequences of the disaster. To date, reliable information on the environmental consequences has still not been published.

It should be noted that the disaster, which occurred in December 2024 as a result of the wreck of the tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, led to critical pollution of the Black Sea waters and coastline. Rosprirodnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage) has filed lawsuits against the vessels’ owners totalling 84.9 billion roubles, while the Krasnodar Region Ministry of Natural Resources has filed a further claim for 34.25 billion roubles for damage to wildlife.

At the same time, an official Rosprirodnadzor representative admitted during court hearings that a significant part of the fuel oil that had settled on the seabed could not be removed for technical reasons: some forms of the oil products could never be fully removed from the body of water. Moreover, the sunken Volgoneft-212’s owner, Kamatransoil, and its charterer, Kama Shipping, have taken no action to address the consequences.

According to satellite monitoring data from June 2026, extremely high temperatures caused the fuel oil lying at depth to warm up and begin seeping through the protective cofferdams of the sunken Volgoneft-239. Extensive oil slicks have again been recorded on the surface of the strait.

It should be noted that, as the media had already reported back in May 2026, regional branches of Rospotrebnadzor are refusing to provide laboratory test data on water and sand samples, while the government commission has been barred from releasing any information on the progress of the emergency clean-up to the media. Data on the state of the seawater and sand on Anapa’s beaches is effectively classified.

In Rybakov’s view, this situation directly contravenes Article 42 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and Article 11 of the Federal Law “On Environmental Protection”, which guarantee every citizen the right to a favourable environment and to reliable information on its condition.

“Rospotrebnadzor is refusing to provide data on the quality of the water and sand in Anapa even in response to official requests from local deputies. None of this stops the authorities from claiming that the city’s resorts and beaches are fit for holidaymakers, and from refusing to acknowledge the problem. Yabloko demands the immediate disclosure of complete and objective data on the state of the water and soil, and calls for a set of measures to be developed together with independent experts to halt the further spread of the disaster and to help prevent similar industrial accidents in future,” Nikolai Rybakov said.

In his appeal, the party leader called on the Prosecutor General to disclose and publish Rospotrebnadzor’s complete data on the state of the water and bottom sediment in Anapa and the Kerch Strait, to carry out an urgent inspection of reports of repeated leaks from the Volgoneft-239 and ensure the complete pumping-out of the fuel, and to establish an independent commission involving scientists and environmentalists to draw up a long-term plan for neutralising the residual fuel oil pollution.

Rybakov also sent similar appeals to Rosprirodnadzor head Svetlana Radionova and Chief Sanitary Doctor Anna Popova.