The court recovered 34 billion rubles from the owners of the sunken tankers.

The Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory fully satisfied the claim of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the region for the recovery from the owners of tankers that sank in the Kerch Strait in December 2024, totaling 34.2 billion rubles.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot", at the end of September, a new claim was filed against the charterer of "Volgoneft-212". The "Marine Rescue Service" demanded another 81.2 million rubles from the chartering company of the tanker that sank in the Kerch Strait in December 2024. On September 28, the Fifteenth Arbitration Appeal Court upheld the decision to recover 49.46 billion rubles from "Kama Shipping" and "Kamatransoil" based on the claim of Rosprirodnadzor for damage caused to the Black Sea.

The court in the Krasnodar Territory made a decision on Thursday regarding the claim of the Ministry of Natural Resources. The defendants in the case are JSC "Volgatransneft" (owner of the tanker "Volgoneft-239"), LLC "Kamatransoil" (owner of the tanker "Volgoneft-212"), and LLC "Kama Shipping" (charterer of this vessel), reports "Kommersant".

The representative of the Ministry of Natural Resources reiterated during the meeting the amount being claimed - over 34.2 billion rubles. This is the volume of damage caused to the environment, and 30.725 million rubles in losses incurred by the regional budget.

At the same time, the representative of the ministry reminded that the claims do not overlap with the claims of Rosprirodnadzor totaling 85 billion rubles, which were satisfied by the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory in 2025, as the agency was recovering damages to the Black Sea as a result of the sinking of the tankers.

The third parties in the case include the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, the regional veterinary department, the Black Sea-Azov Sea Administration of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Use, as well as the ship liability insurers - "Absolute Insurance" and "VSK", clarified "Interfax".

As a result, the court ruled to recover from "Volgatransneft", "Kamatransoil", and "Kama Shipping" jointly 34.2 billion rubles for damage caused to the environment and 30.725 million rubles in losses incurred by the Krasnodar Territory budget. Thus, the arbitration satisfied the claim in full.

All claims were filed by officials against the backdrop of dissatisfaction from volunteers regarding the authorities' role in cleaning up the oil. Thus, in October 2025, the volunteer headquarters "Dolphins" indicated that volunteers had collected about half of the contaminated sand, the removal of which was reported by the authorities, however, in official reports the work of volunteers is not even mentioned.

The tankers "Volgoneft-212" and "Volgoneft-239" sank in the Kerch Strait on December 15, 2024. The destruction of their hulls led to a massive oil spill, due to which a federal state of emergency was declared in the Krasnodar Territory on December 26 of the same year.

Materials on the consequences of the oil spill have been collected by "Caucasian Knot" on the page "Ecological Disaster in Kuban". Also, "Caucasian Knot" has published a report "The Scale of Pollution in Southern Russia with Oil".