Dec. 15 (UPI) — Two oil tankers carrying almost 9,000 metric tons of mazut gasoline had been broken by a storm, broke in half, sunk and induced oil spills in Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea and Russia, a spokesman for Russia’s emergency companies mentioned Sunday.

Mazut is utilized in energy vegetation and different purposes in international locations of the previous Soviet Union and Iran.

Volgoneft 212, ran aground with 13 crew members had been evacuated and one member dying, Russia’s federal sea and inland water transport company, Rosmorrechflot, wrote in an announcement obtained by Russian state-run TASS.

Volgoneft 239 additionally was broken, adrift for a number of hours and ran aground with 14 crew members aboard.

Two legal probes have been launched.

Sputnik posted video from the Russian Southern Transport Prosecutor’s Workplace that exhibits the troubled tankers.

A tugboat, Merkuriy, was dispatched from Kerch to help the crew, and a Mi-8 helicopter from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Conditions took off with rescuers.

Michelle Bockmann, an analyst on the transport business journal Lloyd’s Checklist, advised the BBC the 2 vessels are owned by the corporate Volgatanker.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was briefed in regards to the accident and ordered to prepare rescue efforts.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin arrange a working group to coordinate cleanup operations.

Mash reported they had been constructed round 50 years in the past and had been transformed within the Nineteen Nineties from full-fledged tankers to “river-sea” class vessels.

The Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea on the north and Sea of Azoz on the south, separates Russia from Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. Ukraine has struck Russia’s vessels because the starting of the invasion in February 2022. Round 30% of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is misplaced or disabled, in keeping with the Ukrainian navy.