Black Sea oil spill volunteers in Russia ask Putin to send urgent help

Reuters: MOSCOW (Reuters) - Volunteers helping to clean up a major oil spill along Russia's Black Sea coast appealed in a video released on Monday for President Vladimir Putin to urgently send federal aid, saying that they and local authorities were overwhelmed.

The pollution, which has coated sandy beaches at and around Anapa, a popular summer resort, has caused serious problems for seabirds and everything from dolphins to porpoises.

The oil is from two ageing tankers hit by a storm on Dec. 15. One of the vessels split in half, while the other ran aground.

On Thursday, Putin called the incident an ecological disaster and officials from Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry say over 10,000 people are now involved in the clean-up.

But a group of around 30 local volunteers, who filmed their appeal on a beach strewn with sacks full of polluted sand, told Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin that they believed the scale of the disaster was too big for local authorities to cope and demanded Moscow send urgent help.

"The local authorities do not have the professional resources and technical means to neutralise the consequences of such a large-scale disaster and have been forced to compensate for the lack of manpower by using volunteers with shovels," a spokesperson for the group said, reading out a list of demands.

He said professional clean-up workers needed to be sent in along with scientists specialising in pollution and veterinarians to treat seabirds. Russia, he said, should also appeal to other countries for help with equipment.

"This is a cry from the soul. Such a catastrophe cannot be defeated with shovels," a female volunteer added in the same video appeal.

Alexander Kozlov, the minister for natural resources and ecology, visited Anapa on Monday to oversee the clean-up and said that 366 items of equipment were being used in the operation.

State TV said 40 km (25 miles) of coastline had already been cleaned, but Kozlov said the weather conditions were difficult and that oil was still washing up on beaches despite the erection of barriers at sea to try to keep it from the shore.

Divers were due to check one of the tankers that got into trouble on Dec. 15 to see if it was still leaking oil.

State TV said six dead dolphins had washed up on the shore in the last 24 hours and that an overnight storm had ripped open sacks full of contaminated sand gathered up by volunteers.