Spilled oil has washed up along "tens of kilometers" of the Russian Black Sea coast after two tankers were badly damaged in a storm at the weekend, a local governor said.
Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia's southern Krasnodar region, said on his Telegram channel that fuel oil had been found along the coast from the districts of Temryuk to Anapa.
The Volgoneft 212 tanker split in half on Sunday in the Kerch Strait, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, while the Volgoneft 239 ran aground 80 meters from the shore near the port of Taman in the strait.
The spill has affected wildlife. /Svetlana Radionova/Reuters
The more than 50-year-old ships were carrying some 62,000 barrels of oil products in total, Russian news agency TASS reported, raising fears it could become one of the largest environmental disasters to hit the region in years.
Russia's Natural Resources and Ecology Ministry said on Monday that fuel oil had leaked into the sea, but the scale of the spillage was still not clear.
The shipping industry has raised concern in recent months over the risks and potential for collisions posed by hundreds of "shadow" tankers in open sea lanes, with little incentive for these vessels to follow cleaner shipping standards.
The Kerch Strait, which separates mainland Russia from the Moscow-controlled Crimea region, is a key route for exports of its grain and fuel products.