Volunteers are grappling with environmental havoc across more than 35 miles of coastline, after at least 3,700 tons of heavy oil spilled into the Kerch Strait.

Volunteers helping to clean up a major oil spill along Russia's Black Sea coast appealed in a video released on Monday for President Vladimir Putin to urgently send federal aid, saying that they and local authorities were overwhelmed.

Russia’s top investigator Alexander Bastrykin has ordered law enforcement authorities to launch a criminal investigation into alleged “failures” in addressing the cleanup of a major oil spill along the Black Sea coast in southern Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday hosted Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to the Kremlin by an EU leader since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The situation with European countries that buy Russian gas is very complicated and requires increased attention, the Kremlin said on Monday after talks the previous day between President Vladimir Putin and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

The Kremlin called European gas shipments “very complicated” and requiring “increased attention” on Monday, a day after Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico held a surprise meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss energy and the war in Ukraine.