Rescue teams empty 1,500 tons of oil from Russian tanker

MOSCOW — Rescue workers have successfully removed almost 1,500 tons of oil left onboard a tanker that ran aground last year in southern Russia, officials said Saturday. The mishap resulted in a devastating oil spill that damaged miles (kilometers) of coastline along the Black Sea.

Two Russian ships, the Volgoneft-239 and the Volgoneft-212, were badly damaged in stormy weather on Dec. 15, resulting in thousands of tons of low-grade fuel oil called mazut spilling into the Kerch Strait.

A crew from Russia's Marine Rescue Service siphoned away the remaining 1,488 tons of oil left in the grounded Volgoneft-239 in a six-day operation, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev said Saturday in a post on the Russian government's official Telegram channel.

Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov announced that the damaged tanker would be drained earlier this month but workers found it was continuing to leak oil into the water.

The Volgoneft-239 will now be cleaned and prepared for being dismantled, Savelyev said. The fate of the second tanker, the Volgoneft-212, remains undecided after the boat sank beneath the waves.

So far, oil from the spill has washed up along beaches in Russia's Krasnodar region, as well as in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea and the Berdyansk Spit, some 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the Kerch Strait. President Vladimir Putin earlier in January called the spill ''one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.''

Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said Saturday that more than 173,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil have so far been collected by the weekslong cleanup effort, with thousands of volunteers joining the operation.