Fuel oil from the two Russian tankers that sank in mid-December in the Kerch Strait has washed ashore in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia province, which is partly controlled by Russiaits Moscow-appointed governor said today.

On December 15, the two aging tankers were wrecked when they ran into a storm in this strait between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula, causing massive ecological damage.

“Mazut was detected on the shores (of the Sea of) Azov” the pro-Russian governor of occupied Zaporizhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, said on the Telegram platform. As he explained, an oil spill at least 14 kilometers long was detected in a zone off the port city of Berdyansk. A little further east there is a second, smaller oil slick.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday criticized “inadequate” efforts to clean up the sea as oil washed up on beaches in southern Russia, in the east, and even as far as Sevastopol in Crimea, about 250 km away. from the wreck site.

Russian experts and thousands of volunteers have been trying for a month to limit the pollution, but the situation is still worrying. Many whales have been found dead in recent weeks, according to a Russian non-governmental organization and the head of a volunteer group. The emergency ministry said more than 5,550 birds were “rounded up and saved”.

The two ships were carrying more than 9,000 tons of fuel oil.