Russian authorities sign contracts to send orphans and disabled children to oil-polluted Black Sea beaches
Authorities in Russia’s Volgograd region and the Republic of Tatarstan have signed at least 14 government contracts for organizing “health and recreation” trips for children to the Black Sea resort city of Anapa, despite severe beach contamination caused by the December 15 oil spill in the Kerch Strait, according to iStories Media. Another similar contract in the Moscow region was signed just nine days before the crash — and has yet to be canceled. Here’s what we know.
Journalists report that 4,500 children — including orphans, children in state care, children with disabilities, and “gifted and socially active children” — are set to be sent to resorts in Anapa on the Black Sea. The contracts specifically include swimming in the sea and spending time on the beaches, which Russian Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov has stated won’t be fully cleaned until May 2026.
The trips are scheduled through November 2025, with several planned for the summer, according to iStories. The contracts signed by the authorities in Tatarstan and Volgograd region total nearly 179 million rubles ($1.82 million), while the Moscow region contract amounts to 21.3 million rubles ($216,000).
iStories also reported that Tatarstan authorities have signed at least five contracts with a resort called Vityazevo, owned by 22-year-old Georgy Koriaphili. His uncle, Leonid Koriaphili, a former municipal lawmaker with the United Russia party, was charged with large-scale fraud and arrested in the spring of 2023.
The Kerch Strait oil spill occurred on December 15, 2024, when two Russian oil tankers carrying about 9,200 metric tons of petroleum products ran aground about eight kilometers (five miles) from shore due to inclement weather. On January 23, a Greenpeace representative told the BBC that the spill affected an area of up to 400 square kilometers (154 square miles).
The Russian Transport Ministry has said that the spill was the world’s “first-ever accident involving ‘heavy’ M11 fuel oil,” which sinks or remains suspended when leaked into water, making it especially difficult to clean up.