President Vladimir Putin of Russia declared a state emergency on June 3, five days after a power plant fuel leak in the Arctic region caused 20,000 tonnes of diesel oil to escape into a local river. The oil leak turned the surface of the Ambarnaya river crimson red. The Ambarnaya river is part of a network that flows into the environmentally sensitive Arctic Ocean. The accident is one of the biggest oil spills in modern Russian history, Aleksei Knizhnikov of the environmentalist group WWF Russia told The New York Times. So far, three criminal proceedings have been launched, and the head of the power plant has been detained, the TASS report said. Environmentalists have said the river would be difficult to clean, given its shallow waters and remote location, as well as the magnitude of the spill. Russian chapter of activist group Greenpeace said damages to the Arctic could be at least 6 billion rubles (over $76 million). It has compared the incident to Alaska’s 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. An expert told the BBC that the clean-up effort could take between 5-10 years.
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