Court case materials put bird deaths after the two Volgoneft tankers sank in the Black Sea in December 2024 at 13,524. Environmental lawyer Natalia Lisitsyna publicised the figures from the arbitration case.
The estimate includes about 10,300 great crested grebes and 1,022 birds belonging to nine protected species. In October 2026, the Krasnodar Territory Arbitration Court ordered companies linked to the tankers to pay roughly 34.25 billion rubles for damage to wildlife and its habitat.
Together with two earlier court rulings, the awards stemming from the oil spill total approximately 119.2 billion rubles, according to The Insider’s calculation. The orders do not mean those amounts have already been recovered.