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The meeting commenced with a discussion on several pressing matters. Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev delivered a report on the operations of the Government Commission for providing disaster relief following the incidents with tankers in the Black Sea. Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Alexander Kozlov, and Transport Minister Roman Starovoit supplemented the report with their observations.

Minister of Construction, Housing and Utilities Irek Fayzullin discussed the strategies being implemented to provide housing for citizens affected by the spring 2024 floods. The Presidential Control Directorate, with the support of the Prosecutor General’s Office, will be instructed to evaluate the progress of these efforts.

Minister of Labour and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov provided an update on the indexation of social benefits and various social payments in line with the inflation rate.

Deputy Prime Minister – Chief of the Government Staff Dmitry Grigorenko, along with Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, presented their reports on the enhancement of oversight activities, which was the primary subject of the meeting.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon.

Today, we will be reviewing our performance in oversight activities and discuss ways of improving them. However, we will begin with several urgent and important current issues, as usual.

The first of them deals with the work of the Government Commission for providing disaster relief following the accidents with tankers in the Black Sea.

Please, Mr Savelyev, I asked you to take on this task. You have been travelling to the accident site, I know about that, and have been managing these efforts. How have they been advancing lately?

Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev: Mr President, colleagues,

In keeping with your instructions, Mr President, we have formed a Government Commission with me as its chair to coordinate emergency relief efforts following the tanker accidents in the Kerch Strait.

We opened a federal operational headquarters at the accident site. Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov leads this unit whose task consists of coordinating daily efforts to provide disaster relief in the Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Daily reports from the Emergencies Ministry, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and the Ministry of Transport are delivered daily by 9 am.

The Government Commission approved an inter-agency action plan. We review progress under this plan when the Government Commission meets at the Government Coordination Centre.

On January 15, I visited the Krasnodar Territory with members of the Government Commission, to assess the situation in the emergency zone. We met with volunteers and had a meeting at the regional response centre in Anapa.

A few words about the situation at the site.

The stern of the Volgoneft-239 tanker is grounded near Cape Panagia. Rescuers have installed containment booms around it to prevent further spillage. To remove the fuel oil that remains in the tanker, a 400 metre-long access road was built to reach the stern of the wrecked tanker. Last Friday, we also completed the bunding of its stern part – essentially, a protective spill containment structure was built around the Volgoneft-239 tanker.

On Sunday, January 19, we began pumping out the fuel oil from Volgoneft-239. The four stern tanks contain around 1,400 tonnes of fuel oil in total. It was transported by bitumen trucks, then loaded into rail tanks and delivered by rail to the disposal sites.

As of 8 am today, over 1,100 tonnes of fuel oil have been pumped out, meaning 300 tonnes still remain to be removed. We plan to finish fuel oil removal from the Volgoneft-239 stern next week. Simultaneously, an excavator is used to collect the fuel oil-water mixture from the sea before it can be removed as well – this has been taken care of. Once this is done, we will begin dismantling the tanker stern and transporting its parts to the scrapping site.

A project is being developed to lift the sunken tanker fragments – the bow part of Volgoneft-239 and the bow and stern parts of Volgoneft-212. Transport Minister Roman Starovoit is keeping the operation to recover and scrap the wreckage under special review.

We constantly survey the water area and more than 955 kilometres of coastline. More than 5,000 people, 680 units of equipment, and 28 watercrafts are involved in the clean-up operations. The main sites of fuel oil discharge on the shore have been cleared, while no new major wash-ups have been recorded. More than 170,000 tonnes of polluted sand and soil have been collected.

Volunteers, 700 of them, help us a lot in our cleanup efforts. During the working trip, we met with the people from volunteer associations. The participants noted the availability of every material and technical mean they need to do their work, and proper organisation of accommodation and meal provision. Personally and on behalf my colleagues, I would like to thank the volunteers for their good work.

Seven properly licenced organisations with due permits are involved in the efforts to dispose of the contaminated sand and soil. The Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Alexander Kozlov supervises this work.

Eighteen animal and bird rescue points have been set up in the emergency zone. The bird and animal rescue efforts are under Minister Kozlov’s control as well.

Rospotrebnadzor laboratories monitor the quality of air, water, and soil, as well as the safety of fish and fish products on a daily basis.

The research and expert community supports us in our emergency response efforts. This work has been directed by Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov.

Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev ensures assistance in providing uninterrupted communication at the site and monitoring of the media.

Mr President, systemic work is underway to provide relief. The work is monitored on a daily basis. Tomorrow, members of the commission and I are heading to the Krasnodar Territory, where we will inspect the affected sites and hold a meeting. I will report to you afterwards.

Thank you for your attention. This concludes my report.

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Vladimir Putin: I would like to thank all of you for our joint work today. We discussed important matters, including extremely far-reaching current issues.

I hope that we will continue working on the issue that our discussion focused on today, which has to do with control and supervision. We must do this to the best of our abilities, using the modern technical methods we have mentioned today, to protect our society, the state and our citizens from everything we regard as neglect by the state or any other organisations, including commercial ones. At the same time, these efforts must not infringe on people’s freedoms, be mired in red tape or hinder development. We have been striving to adhere to this path for many years, and I hope we will maintain this development vector for these activities.

Thank you very much, and all the best.