Russian tanker carrying 130,000 tons of fuel oil sinks in Leningrad region

This was reported by Russian Telegram channels Baza and Fontanka SPB Online.

As Baza writes, on the night of February 9, the tanker Koala, with 24 crew members on board—including 4 Russians, 8 Georgians, and 12 Indonesians—was docked at the third berth in the seaport of Ust-Luga.

Around 02:00, approximately 130,000 tons of fuel oil had been loaded onto the tanker, and the vessel was preparing for departure when powerful explosions occurred, leading to flooding in the engine room. The crew managed to evacuate, but the ship began taking on water.

By 05:00, it was determined that the tanker was settling stern-first into shallow waters. Emergency services deployed containment booms around the vessel to prevent an oil spill.

"In the morning, a technological incident occurred on the Koala tanker in the port of Ust-Luga during engine startup, damaging the engine room. The tanker is moored at the pier. There is no threat of an oil spill. The crew has been evacuated, and no casualties have been reported," said the governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko.

What is known about sunken Russian oil tankers

On December 15, 2024, two Russian tankers, Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, which were carrying fuel oil, broke in half in the Kerch Strait.

After the accident, several dead dolphins washed ashore, and videos of polluted beaches circulated online.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was doing nothing to prevent an environmental disaster in the Kerch Strait.

Russian authorities must admit that they downplayed the scale of the ecological catastrophe caused by the tanker accidents in the Kerch Strait, the Center for Countering Disinformation reported.

Later, it was announced that Russian authorities had ordered the sunken Volgoneft tankers to be raised by June 16, 2025.

On December 25, 2024, due to the fuel oil spill, a regional state of emergency was declared in Krasnodar Krai. The next day, a federal state of emergency was declared in the region. A few days later, the so-called authorities of temporarily occupied Crimea introduced a regional state of emergency due to the fuel oil spill in the Black Sea. The pollution later reached Koktebel.

On January 4, the "governor" of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, reported that an oil spill from the Russian tanker accidents had been detected on several beaches in temporarily occupied Sevastopol. A state of emergency was declared in the city.