More than 1.8 million tons of oil-contaminated sand were removed from the Kerch Strait.

More than 1.8 million tons of oil-contaminated sand and soil were removed from the Kerch Strait and adjacent territories. This was announced on August 15 by the Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Andrey Nikitin.

"Work continues on cleaning the muddy soil and muddy sand. More than 1.8 million tons have already been harvested, and this work is proceeding as planned," he said.

The minister added that a unique underwater cutting operation was carried out on the protruding parts of sunken tankers. More than 260 m of metal was cut.

Nikitin stressed that this operation made it possible to prepare the ship hulls for pumping out the remaining fuel oil. He stressed that unique cofferdams were made for this purpose, which had not been used anywhere else in the world before.

On May 19, the operational headquarters of the Krasnodar Territory reported that small emissions of fuel oil were detected on the Anapa coast after the tanker crash in the Kerch Strait.

Tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 crashed in the Kerch Strait on December 15, 2024 due to bad weather. The incident caused a spill of petroleum products. 27 people were evacuated from both ships, one person died. On behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a working group was set up to coordinate work to eliminate the consequences of the emergency.

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