Ukrainian Drones Strike Tuapse Refinery Three Times, Causing Fires and Oil Spills

Authorities dispatched more than a dozen boats to clean up the oil slick at sea near Tuapse.

Booms were installed on beaches to contain the spill, while emergency crews and volunteers used excavators to clear the stony beaches, collecting the oil in barrels and plastic bags. “There is oil all over the coastline within a 20-kilometre (12-mile) radius of Tuapse,” Solovev said.

Local environmentalists told the independent Russian media outlet Important Stories that authorities covered some beaches near Tuapse with new pebbles instead of removing the oil mess.

Ruslan Khvostov, chairman of the Green Alternative party, stated that oil products settle in the bottom sediments of the Black Sea, disrupting the food chain. Khvostov added that the oil slick blocks oxygen, causing mass mortality of fish, shellfish, and bottom dwellers.

He stated that biodiversity restoration in the Black Sea will take five to 10 years or longer, as in the case of the 2024 Kerch spill.

Khvostov also noted that toxins accumulate in organisms, threatening birds and marine mammals such as dolphins and bottlenose dolphins. In December 2024, two Russian oil tankers sank during a storm on the Black Sea, spilling thousands of tonnes of petroleum that began washing up near the resort town of Anapa.

Emergency crews and tens of thousands of volunteers, including Sergei Solovev, were dispatched to clean up the spill.

Thousands of dolphins and porpoises have washed up dead ashore as a result of sonar activity from mainly Russian submarines in the Black Sea. In June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam in the Kherson region was destroyed by an explosion while the area was under Russian control.

The destruction caused water contaminated by toxic waste to flood dozens of nearby settlements and released pollutants into the Black Sea.

The flooding destroyed the habitats of animals such as the endangered sandy blind mole-rat, whose almost entire living range was flooded. The fish and other aquatic wildlife in the Kakhovka reservoir mostly perished after the dam's destruction in June 2023. Experts said Russian forces were likely behind the blast that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam.

Moscow denied responsibility for the destruction and blamed Ukrainian saboteurs.