Crimea chief sounds alarm over oil spill from Russian tankers

The head of Moscow-annexed Crimea warned on Wednesday there was a "high risk" the peninsula would suffer severe environmental damage from an oil spill in the Black Sea.

Two Russian oil tankers on December 15 spilt around 2,400 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the sea in the Kerch Strait between Crimea and southern Russia.

So far the spill has largely affected southern Russia's Krasnodar region, where the oil has contaminated beaches and killed birds and sea mammals, in what President Vladimir Putin has called an "ecological disaster".

Crimea's Russia-installed head, Sergei Aksyonov, warned Wednesday at a meeting with officials that the "situation is moving in our direction".

"According to forecasts there exists a high risk that the situation could worsen and the scale of the emergency could be comparable with the situation in Krasnodar region," he wrote on social media.

The fuel oil has already reached Crimea and an oil slick was spotted on January 3 off the western city of Sevastopol, around 250 km from the site of the spill.

Sevastopol's Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said Tuesday that new oil slicks had been discovered on a city beach and in a bay.

So far there have not been "significant amounts of fuel oil emissions" in Crimea, Aksyonov said.

The cleanup operation in Crimea has removed more than 300 tonnes of oil products and contaminated sand and soil, according to Russia's emergency situations ministry.

Several dead dolphins have been found by volunteers on the shores of Sevastopol, a local official said on Wednesday.