Emergency teams were continuing to clean up a massive oil spill staining the Kerch Strait in Russia.

Footage shows excavators scooping up the black slick along the Crimean and Russian coasts.

Authorities said more than 167,000 tons of polluted sand and soil have been collected so far as clean-up crews treated 43,000 square metres of affected waters.

Coastal areas near Anapa and Sevastopol have seen the removal of 16.27 tons of oil waste.

At the Krasnodar Krai region, cleaners were scouring a 220-kilometre stretch of shoreline, while efforts have cleared more than 180 kilometres of the coastline in Crimea.

More than 40 specialists and 10 units of equipment were deployed as the large-scale operation continued.

On December 15, 2024, two Russian oil tankers, the Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, were severely damaged during a storm in the Kerch Strait, spilling around 2,400 metric tons of oil products into the Black Sea.

The incident has led to extensive environmental damage, prompting cleanup efforts and the formation of an emergency task force to address the spill's impact.