Fuel oil instead of sand, dolphins instead of vacationers: Veniamin Kondratyev "opens" the resort season amid an environmental disaster
00:30, 16 апреля 2026 г.
The head of the Krasnodar Krai, Veniamin Kondratyev, when he came to ask Putin for support this past weekend after the search of his Tuscan-style estate, solemnly promised the Russian president that all the beaches of the Krasnodar Krai would open to vacationers this year.
And literally right after his words, a huge slick of fuel oil appeared in the sea, which reached those very beaches. Yet another environmental disaster. First, dead birds and dolphins began washing up on the shore, and then the fuel oil reached the beaches of the Vityazevskaya Spit, the Anapa Peresyp, Tortuga, the central beach of Anapa, the Grand Hotel beach, etc. Dozens of birds covered in a black film are being taken by volunteers to hangars, where they are trying to save them.
The scale of the disaster is clearly visible in photos and videos. Hundreds of bags of fuel oil are being removed from the beaches, but new oil keeps appearing. Kondratyev’s team immediately launched a counter-PR campaign. Local bloggers and journalists, with rare exceptions, talk about "small drops" of fuel oil that are hardly noticeable. Well, the main version for the appearance of the slick is not at all a leak from a previously sunken tanker — which is the most likely — but rather some consequences of drone strikes.
Since Kondratyev told Putin that the swimming season will take place, that is how it will be. And the previously AI-generated videos showing happy vacationers swimming and sunbathing up to their heads in fuel oil could very well become reality.
