Russian strikes cause sunflower oil spill in Ukraine’s Odesa
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A dead bird covered in sunflower oil on Dec 24, following a spill from a port terminal that was hit by a Russian missile and drone attack in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
ODESA, Ukraine - A sunflower oil spill, caused by Russian aerial bombardments, has contaminated the shoreline around the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, killing wildlife and triggering warnings from conservationists.
Odesa has been targeted with some of the heaviest strikes of the war in recent weeks, in what Ukrainian officials have slammed as an attempt to hobble Ukraine’s maritime network and its vital agricultural exports.
An AFP journalist in the city on Dec 24 filmed frothy brown pools of sunflower oil on the shore and slicks atop the water.
Volunteers were scooping up sand and pulling dead birds out of the water.
“The cause was damage to sunflower oil tanks as a result of massive enemy attacks on port infrastructure, causing some of the oil to spill,” Governor Oleh Kiper said in a statement.
The Pivdenny port in the region was temporarily closed on Dec 24 to help with the clean-up.
Marine ecology expert Vladyslav Balinsky called it an “ecological disaster”.
“Dozens of dead birds, mostly little grebes, lie on the shore,” he wrote.
Veterinarian Leonid Stoyanov, who was volunteering to try to save the birds, told AFP it was a “terrible situation”.
“The animal does not die from the oil itself. It dies because its feathers are covered with a layer of fat, which is washed away by the sunflower oil, causing the animal to die of hypothermia.” AFP
