The environmental group said it analyzed satellite images from October 7 and 8 that show a plume of oil products stretching behind the vessel as it was towed northwest. By midday on October 8, the tanker had passed Tuapse, and the slick had grown to roughly 25 square kilometers, according to Greenpeace.
A day earlier, the ship was about 13 kilometers from the settlement of Lazarevskoye, roughly 50 kilometers northwest of where the fire broke out. No flames were visible on board at that point, but a slick of oil products covering about 8 square kilometers was visible on the water's surface.
Russia's Transport Ministry said the vessel was attacked by unmanned boats. All 23 crew members were evacuated and no one was injured. The tanker flies the flag of Liberia and is owned by RIO ENTERPRISES SA, registered in the Marshall Islands, and according to The Insider it likely belongs to Russia's "shadow fleet." Preliminary data indicate the Aframax Rio was carrying crude oil from Novorossiysk to India. The tanker is on Ukraine's sanctions list.
Russian authorities said after the fire that there was no pollution. Rospotrebnadzor, the consumer rights and public health watchdog, said on the morning of October 7 that there was no contamination in the Black Sea waters. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "everything is fine with the cleanup of the consequences." Sochi Mayor Andrei Proshunin said no contamination of the sea by the oil cargo had been recorded, while swimming restrictions were introduced at Sochi beaches. Dmitry Plishkin, head of the Sirius administration, said on October 8 that the beaches had reopened because no traces of oil hydrocarbons had been found.
Greenpeace linked the situation to Russia's war against Ukraine. According to the organization, Russia uses oil to finance the war, and that oil now poses a threat to the residents and nature of the Black Sea region.
Accounts differ: according to the Transport Ministry, Rospotrebnadzor and the Sochi mayor's office, no spill or contamination of the waters occurred after the fire. According to Greenpeace, which analyzed satellite images, the area of the oil slick had reached about 25 square kilometers by October 8.