Why Russia’s attempts to get round oil sanctions risk ecological disaster

Russia is taking increasingly drastic and hazardous measures in order to maintain its oil trade amid sanctions over the Ukraine war, bringing a much greater risk of a spill. Shweta Sharma reports

A satellite image taken on 20 March 2023 by Maxar Technologies shows a ship-to-ship transfer in Lakonikos Bay (Maxar Technologies)

The last time Russia was involved in a major oil spill in the Arctic, it triggered one of the worst manmade environmental disasters in recent history. The collapse of a storage tank near Norilsk, due to melting permafrost, spilled some 21,000 tonnes of oil into the vulnerable Arctic ecosystem, contaminating a 350 sq km area and turning the bright turqoise waters of Siberia’s Ambarnaya River into red sludge.

Three years later, the waters of the Ambarnaya are still red, and the consequences of the incident are expected to last for decades. State investigators have accused the company involved of negligence and mismanagement, and Vladimir Putin was said to be personally angered by alleged delays in informing the authorities about the spill.

Now, experts and environmentalists fear that the way Russia is responding to Western oil sanctions over the Ukraine war is creating the perfect set of circumstances for another major spill, and that another disaster is overdue.