Russian Official Slams Ukraine for Allegedly Thwarting Oil Spill Cleanup Effort
The deputy head of the Russian Federal Service for Regulation of the Use of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor), Oleg Mitvol, has accused Ukrainian officials of obstructing Russia’s efforts to clean up a fuel oil spill in the Kerch Strait. Speaking on Ekho Moskvy’s “No Exit” discussion programme on 14 November, Mitvol claimed that Ukrainian environmental inspectors did not let Russian specialists pump out 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil from a sunken ship.Mitvol said that a Russian tanker that was about to retrieve the fuel oil from the sunken ship (“there is no boundary there, of course, but it’s closer to the Ukrainian shore”) was stopped by Ukrainian inspectors and sent back to the port of Kavkaz. He also alleged that the Russian ship’s captain was given a directive from the Ukrainian Environment Ministry in the Ukrainian language, which the captain did not understand.
Answering a question whether this could be Ukraine’s reaction to Mitvol’s statements on the need to build a controversial dam connecting Ukraine’s Tuzla Spit island to Russia, Mitvol said: “I would like to say that, as a matter of fact, we only have one planet to share. If the Ukrainian Environment Ministry believes that the environment should be protected by allowing as many fuel oil spills around Crimea as possible, then, at least, Ukrainian citizens should know about this.”
In this context, he recalled the controversy surrounding the Chinese anti-pollution dam erected on the Amur river in 2005 and noted: “That dam, if it stayed there, could in fact change the Russian state border. But certain agreements had been in place, and once the toxic slick passed Khabarovsk water intakes, the dam was dismantled. When the matter concerned the health and well-being of people, our state took a risk, because the Chinese might have said: here is the dam, now let’s revise the border. But, after all, one can arrange normal relations with neighbours”.
Originally published by Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 1704 18 Nov 07.
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