authorities in Russia explained A federal emergency was declared on Thursday in response to the oil spill along the Black Sea coast, which local and regional emergency services, supported by thousands of volunteers, struggled to clean up last week.

“Yesterday, together with all my colleagues, we discussed the situation, and by the leader’s (President Vladimir Putin) decision, it is granted the status of a federal emergency,” said Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-backed head of annexed Crimea, was quoted by Interfax .

Later on Thursday, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov convened an emergency commission to formalize the decision, allowing federal funding to be allocated to deal with the consequences of the oil spill.

The decision comes a day after the southern Krasnodar region declared a regional state of emergency due to confusing cleanup efforts by local authorities. Residents criticized the operation, citing inadequate staff and equipment for the looming environmental disaster.

The oil spill, which occurred on December 15, was caused when two Russian-flagged oil tankers were damaged during a storm, spilling thousands of tons of heavy oil, known as mazut, into the Black Sea. Rescue workers reported Monday that about 55 kilometers (34 miles) of coastline was polluted.

Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, a scientist who heads the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Water Problems and was Russia’s environment minister from 1991 to 1996, said on Wednesday that at least 200,000 tons of soil along the Black Sea coast were contaminated with fuel oil following the tanker accident nearby the Kerch Strait.

“It will grow. There is no doubt about this, since fuel oil remains in the sea in relatively large quantities,” Danilov-Danilyan said during a press conference. “It continues to wash up on the cleaned shore. It needs to be cleaned a second or third time. We have to prepare for that.”

He also criticized the lack of equipment and the reliance on untrained and unequipped volunteers.

“There are no bulldozers, no trucks. Virtually no heavy machinery,” he said. “Volunteers only have shovels and useless plastic bags that tear. While the bags are waiting to finally be picked up, storms arise and they end up back in the sea. It’s unthinkable!”

Danilov-Danilyan warned that affected communities along the Black Sea coast may not be able to accommodate tourists in spring and summer due to high levels of pollution on the water and beaches.

“We don’t have many places with warm beaches in the country. Hardly any of the most important ones will disappear and it is now very difficult to say for how long, perhaps for a season,” he said.

At his annual news conference last week, Putin blamed oil tanker captains for the disaster, claiming they went out to sea without authorization.

AFP contributed reporting.