A Hidden Ecological Threat

On December 15, the tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 sank on the Kerch Strait, causing an oil spill that stretched for miles along the Black Sea coastline. According to journalists from the independent investigative publication Vazhnye Istory (Important Stories), the tankers were carrying fuel oil to the storage tanker FIRN, which is allegedly involved in the shadow export of Russian oil products. Both Volgoneft vessels were not authorized to operate at sea in December, and one was sailing with expired documents.

However, the two sunken ships are not the only vessels of this type that operate in violation of regulations. 

Volgoneft is a river-sea class of tanker meant to transport oil products from inland Russia to coastal ports via river, where cargo is then transferred to larger sea tankers. Most tankers of this type have winter restrictions in their documentation, as they are designed for calmer river waters and coastal areas with lower waves.

Despite these restrictions, 13 Volgoneft-type tankers went to sea in 2024 and early 2025 during periods when their classification certificates prohibited it. At least seven of these tankers not only traveled in violation of their certificates but also took the same route as the sunken vessels — from Rostov-on-Don to the transshipment area of the Port of Kavkaz in the Black Sea. One tanker, Volgoneft-141, unloaded more than 4,000 tons of fuel oil onto a storage tanker at the Port of Kavkaz just one day after the accident and spill.

In the aftermath of the Kerch Strait disaster, Russian officials denied that the fuel oil spill was related to any export operation, claiming the cargo was being transported for domestic use. But Vazhnye Istory journalists concluded that Volgoneft tankers have been used in shadow export schemes for Russian oil products. Throughout 2024 and January 2025, such tankers delivered 800,000 tons of oil products to storage tankers, more than 80 percent of which were then transferred to sea tankers flying foreign flags.

The largest share — 280,000 tons of fuel oil — was delivered to the Panama-flagged sea tanker FIRN, port records show. It was FIRN that the sunken Volgoneft tankers were supplying, and several other tankers past their service deadlines also unloaded fuel oil there. FIRN is listed as part of the Russian shadow fleet, according to Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate and Greenpeace. This fleet consists of hundreds of vessels allegedly operated by Russia to evade policing following the enactment of the 2022 Russian crude oil price cap sanctions by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union in response to Russia’s War on Ukraine.

Notably, eleven years ago, Marine Engineering Bureau head Gennady Yegorov warned that Volgoneft-class tankers should not operate at sea carrying heavy oil and oil products at all. By 2012, he wrote, the accident rate for Volgoneft vessels had roughly doubled, to four or five catastrophes per 1,000 ships. Each of the Volgoneft vessels that went to sea against regulations risked a potential environmental catastrophe, said Yevgeny Simonov, an ecologist and expert with the Working Group for the Study of the Environmental Consequences of the War in Ukraine.