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Feb. 26, 2026, 2:23 p.m.
Storm brings up old fuel oil on the Crimean coast again
This article also available in English3
PHOTOS: Glavkom
Another wave of coastline pollution by oil products has been recorded in the temporarily occupied Crimea.
This was reported by Glavkom.
The February storms provoked large-scale re-pollution of the Black Sea as a result of the accident of the Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 tankers that occurred at the end of 2024. Powerful underwater currents lifted the bottom layers of fuel oil that lay in the Kerch Strait and brought it to the beaches of southeastern Crimea. The oil slicks have already led to massive deaths of wild waterfowl, indicating a deep degradation of the local ecosystem.
The geography of the disaster has gone far beyond the original accident site. Contamination similar to fuel oil was detected by the State Ecological Inspectorate on the coast of Odesa region. Laboratory tests of water and soil samples are currently underway to officially confirm the link to the December accident.
The situation emphasizes the critical danger of maritime transportation in the absence of proper monitoring in the occupied territories. Environmentalists emphasize that the fuel oil that has settled on the bottom will remain an environmental mine for many years, threatening the fishing and tourism potential of the entire region after each severe storm.
Also, as of the end of 2025, the total amount of damage caused to the nature reserve fund of the Kamianska Sich National Park in Kherson region was estimated at 107 billion. The territory of the reserve, which was seized by the invaders in March 2022 and where the front line passed twice, continues to suffer from shelling even after de-occupation. In particular, in January 2026, in one of the settlements of the region, the Russian military attacked a park service vehicle with a drone.
Over the past year, 98 fires were recorded on the territory of Kamianska Sich, which burned about 5,000 hectares of protected land. Yulia Khodosovtseva, deputy director of the national park, said that the fire destroys unique plant species listed in the Red Book. In addition to vegetation, animals are suffering massively from the hostilities: although some of them managed to leave the danger zone, remote mining of the territory has become a critical threat to those who remained.
