Regions Calling: More Questions Than Answers After Latest Black Sea Oil Spill

By Leyla Latypova Oct. 22, 2026 Smoke rises from the tanker Aframax Rio that caught fire after coming under attack on October 6 on the coast of Sochi. Social media Hello and welcome to Regions Calling, your guide to developments from beyond the Russian capital by The Moscow Times. In this week’s edition, we are putting the spotlight on the southern Krasnodar region, home to Russia’s vast Black Sea coast, which is reeling from the environmental fallout of a Ukrainian drone attack on a Liberian-flagged Aframax Rio tanker — while officials have offered few details. But first, a look at the latest news from the regions: The Headlines Oleg Mikhailov, the head of the Communist Party’s office in the northern republic of Komi, was detained in Moscow on Wednesday. The alleged reason for the detention was a 2024 social media post about jailed anti-war sociologist and Marxist theorist Boris Kagarlitsky. Lawmakers in the Far East city of Khabarovsk abolished direct mayoral elections this week. This leaves Russia with just two major cities where voters can still elect their mayors: Khakassia’s capital Abakan and Chukotka’s Anadyr.From now on, Khabarovsk City Duma lawmakers will elect the mayor from candidates presented by the region’s governor. Residents of the village of Tura, the administrative capital of the Evenk district in the Krasnoyarsk region, have been struggling with food shortages after low water levels and earlier-than-usual frosts halted river navigation on the Nizhnyaya Tunguska River, the area’s only connection with mainland Russia. Reliance on air delivery forced food prices to rise sharply, with a pack of 10 eggs costing as much as 900 rubles ($10.87) at some stores instead of the usual 130 rubles ($1.57), Govorit NeMoskva reported. The regional prosecutor’s office opened a criminal probe into the shortages last week, while authorities vowed to deliver 124 tons of provisions until the end of November to resolve the crisis. The Evenk district, formerly a separate federal subject, is an area roughly the size of Turkey with a population of slightly over 13,000 people. Russia’s Supreme Court designated a closed Sufi Muslim order from the republic of Ingushetia an “extremist” organization last week. The court claimed members of the Batal Hajji brotherhood “provided material support for bandit insurgents of the North Caucasus,” linking them to the deadly March 2024 attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue and other violent attacks. The North Caucasus republic of Dagestan’s parliament has elected a former judge as the republic's new head. Fyodor Shchukin, an ethnic Russian from the Nizhny Novgorod region, had been appointed as interim head of the Muslim-majority region in May after former head Sergei Melikov, who is also not from the region, resigned following public backlash over his handling of deadly floods in the republic. Political prisoner Rustam Khalikov died in a penal colony in the Penza region last week at age 49. Khalikov had been serving the seventh year of his 12-year prison term for alleged membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a pan-Islamist organization that Russia banned as a terrorist group in 2003. The circumstances of his passing remain unclear. The Spotlight On the evening of Oct. 6, apocalyptic photos of a thick plume of smoke rising from the burning sea against a bright dusk sky flooded the Russian internet. These images showed the result of one of Ukraine’s most successful drone attacks on the energy infrastructure along Russia’s Black Sea coast as the 247-meter, Liberian-flagged Afromax Rio oil tanker had been hit off the shore of the resort city of Sochi. Environmental specialists were quick to sound the alarm over the fire's potentially catastrophic consequences, saying its ecological impact could exceed that of the massive 2024 spill near the resort city of Anapa, which left beaches coated in heavy fuel oil and mobilized thousands of volunteers. Two weeks after the attack, as locals find oil-covered birds and pollution builds up along the coast, there are still more questions than answers. ‘Who is responsible?’ “I would be a bad expert if I were to outline the [exact environmental] consequences right now,” one prominent environmentalist told The Moscow Times. “Why? Because it is not known how much oil has spilled as a result of this attack. And that is the main problem.” Though regional authorities initially denied that the attack had caused an oil spill, Krasnodar Governor Venyamin Kondratyev warned of a potential emergency in Gelendzhik and Novorossiysk one week after the attack. Smoke rises from the tanker Aframax Rio that caught fire after coming under attack on Oct. 6. Social media The regional Emergency Situations Ministry also said it “detected minor oil spills” along the shoreline near Novorossiysk last week, but denied they were linked to the Aframax Rio. The environmentalist, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said officials’ reluctance to publicize details of the attack’s environmental impact comes amid mounting evidence of a spill and contradicts Russian legislation that “prohibits classifying information about the environment and environmental pollution.” The Afromax Rio was towed to Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest Black Sea port, the day after the attack — a move decried by prominent local environmental campaigner Tatiana Tribat, who pointed to the already heavy environmental burden borne by the city. Satellite images analyzed by Greenpeace showed the damaged vessel leaving an oil slick that covered around 25 square kilometers by Oct. 8. Independent environmental monitor Prozrachny Mir also dentified an oil slick stretching along the coast from Novorossiysk toward the town of Arkhipo-Osipovka some 70 kilometers (43 miles) south in images dated Oct. 10. Meanwhile, residents of Novorossiysk, Sochi and smaller coastal towns along the tanker’s route have reported finding oil-covered birds and traces of pollution washing ashore. “Every day we receive reports [of contamination] from Yuzhnaya Ozereevka, Limanchik, Dyurso and elsewhere. If it wasn’t the Aframax Rio that fouled the coastline, then who is responsible for the pollution?” Tribat told a local newspaper. A cleansing fire For coastal residents who remember the Anapa disaster, the images were causes for concern. Yet evidence available from local media and volunteers “suggest that the spill from Afromax Rio was, in fact, significantly smaller” than that disaster, the environmental expert told The Moscow Times. The Anapa spill happened in December 2024 when two Russian-flagged oil tankers were damaged during a storm, releasing over 9,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, known as mazut, into the Black Sea. Pollution from the spill stretched from annexed Crimea to Georgia, though Russia’s Krasnodar region was hit the worst. “What we see now is incomparably smaller coastal pollution,” the Russia-based expert said. “Back then, hundreds — even thousands — of birds were affected. In this instance, the number is in single digits. Back then, about 60 kilometers [37 miles] of coastline was covered in…a continuous strip of fuel oil,” he said. Volunteers clean fuel oil on the Anapa coast in December 2024. Ldpr.ru Though the Afromax Rio can carry up to 100,000 metric tons of oil — nearly 10 times the combined load of the two tankers that caused the 2024 Anapa spill — this leak’s less pronounced impact on the environment is likely the result of the apocalyptic fire documented in the initial images. “Of course, burning oil pollutes the air, then the combustion products…fall into the sea,” the expert said. “But this amount of damage and consequences are incomparable to what would have happened if all that oil poured out unburnt into the sea.” The ghost of Anapa Authorities reopened beaches affected by the 2024 Anapa spill this summer, but the disaster is far from over. Images analyzed by satellite imagery monitor Sky Eye in July identified a fresh oil slick coming from the sunken bow of the Volgoneft-239 tanker in the Kerch Strait. Meanwhile, authorities have long denied any ongoing leaks coming from the wreckage — sometimes in statements accompanied by photos of divers emerging from inspections covered in oil. The consequences of the Afromax Rio spill could be shorter-lived, as some reports suggest authorities have already started pumping the remaining oil out of the tanker. But the ongoing war in Ukraine, which has seen an escalation in maritime drone activity in recent months, means that a new oil disaster threatening the Black Sea’s ecosystem could be just around the corner. “In recent months, Ukraine has significantly intensified its attacks on civilian vessels [in Black Sea], including tankers. While there do not appear to have been any major spills…some level of pollution has nonetheless occurred,” the expert said. “And yet no damage from a military strike can compare to a disaster caused by negligence of officials and vessel operators, corruption and the like — which is precisely what led to the 2024 accident,” he said. Photo of the Week vkratce_vld / Telegram Authorities in the Far East port of Vladivostok removed a statue of Nobel Prize-winning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the city’s central embankment on Tuesday to relocate it to the city outskirts. Vladivostok city hall had ordered the Soviet dissident’s statue to be relocated earlier this year after deeming its presence among the warships “inappropriate.” But just a day later, the 2.5-meter-tall monument reappeared on the embankment after it was found to be too large for its new location. It is unclear if the authorities will proceed with the plan after this week’s mishap. More on this… “Russia’s Green Party Helps Putin More Than the Environment” by Vladimir Slivyak “As Their Nationwide Pollution Problem Deepens, Russians Say They Have Bigger Worries” by Leyla Latypova “How This Russian Nuclear Waste Dump Became an Unlikely Victim of the Ukraine War” by Brawley Benson Read more about: Regions , Krasnodar , Ukraine war , Environment , Oil , Drones , Pollution , Black Sea Sign up for our free weekly newsletter Our weekly newsletter contains a hand-picked selection of news, features, analysis and more from The Moscow Times. You will receive it in your mailbox every Friday. Never miss the latest news from Russia. Preview Subscribers agree to the Privacy Policy We sent a confirmation to your email. Please confirm your subscription. A Message from The Moscow Times: Dear readers, We are facing unprecedented challenges. 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Read more Russia’s Krasnodar Region Raises Alert as Oil Washes Ashore on Black Sea Coast Governor Veniamin Kondratyev attributed the spill to “accidents” involving vessels targeted by Ukrainian naval drones on Oct. 6. 2 Min read Russian May Holiday Hotel Bookings Slump as Drone Attacks Hit Black Sea Tourism Hotel reservations in the Krasnodar region, home to some of Russia’s most popular seaside resorts, have dropped 20.7% year-on-year for the May holidays... 2 Min read Ukraine Hits Key Russian Oil Terminal After U.S. Warning Ukraine’s General Staff has previously said the Sheskharis oil terminal supports Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. 2 Min read Spill Discovered in Black Sea After Ukrainian Strike on Tuapse Oil Terminal – BBC It is the latest in a series of oil spills in the Black Sea in recent months. 2 Min read