From one to 15 years: how long will it be possible to relax on the beaches of the Black Sea (photo)
24 January 16:44
The beaches of the Black Sea coast will be suitable for safe recreation only in a year. The reason is oil pollution, said Alexander Kozlov, head of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
According to preliminary estimates, 280 hectares of beach area need to be restored. This will require approximately 840 thousand cubic meters of sand. It will also be necessary to raise three sunken parts of the tanker (or pump out oil from them). According to preliminary estimates, this will cost the aggressor state 1.5 billion rubles.
In particular, the situation on the beaches of the Anapa resort is catastrophic.
“We will start in the fourth quarter of the year and finish in May 2026. This is the off-season. The beach should be restored by the next season,” the Russian official said.

And it will be possible to talk about the final damage to the Black Sea ecosystem only after all pollutant emissions are eliminated.
Meanwhile, environmental experts (including the founder of the Russian Center for Clean Nature 12-15 Alexander Lukshin) are more pessimistic. According to them, it may take 10-15 years to improve the ecology of the Black Sea beaches after the disaster.
“It should be borne in mind that the amount of fuel oil lying at the bottom has not yet been recorded, which will rise during warming, meaning it will be brought back to the shores,” said Liukshyn.
Tanker accident off the Black Sea coast: what is known
on December 15, 2024, two Volgoneft tankers carrying fuel oil crashed in the Kerch Strait. According to the official version, the incident was caused by a storm. First, the vessels were cut by powerful waves, and then they ran aground near Taman. As a result of the tanker disaster, oil products were spilled.
As early as December 17, Russian media reported that the oil slick after the tanker disaster had already polluted up to 35 kilometers of the coast near Anapa. At the same time, a state of emergency was declared in the city, as the oil spill reached more than 40 kilometers along the coastline.
on December 21, 2024, it became known that a state of emergency had also been declared in Kerch (the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula). The fuel oil that leaked from the Volgoneft-212 tanker drifted southeast and stretched several kilometers along the Black Sea coast.
And at the beginning of the new year, on January 4, a state of emergency of regional significance had to be declared in occupied Sevastopol.

The coast of Odesa region is also threatened by the accident of Russian tankers. Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk believes that Russian fuel oil from the occupied Crimea has every chance of reaching the territory of Ukraine. According to him, this is evidenced by the counterclockwise flow along the Ukrainian coast, and it may even reach Romania or Bulgaria.
In addition, Pletenchuk drew attention to reports from the coasts of Turkey and Georgia regarding fuel oil. Therefore, there is a risk that fuel oil will not bypass Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Office of the President of Ukraine says that Russia is using extremely old vessels – 50 years old – using anything to make money. This is a full-scale threat – both in terms of financing the war and in terms of damage to nature. No sea in the world – not the Black Sea, not the Azov Sea, not the Baltic Sea, not the North Sea – no sea deserves all this damage from the Russian presence. Now in the Black Sea, fuel oil is a problem of the people themselves, and Vladimir Putin is doing nothing to solve the problem.