MOSCOW (Reuters) - Emergency workers toiling to clean up an oil spill in the Black Sea have detected seven new slicks, a Russian official told the TASS state news agency on Friday, as authorities struggle to mitigate the effects of the nearly month-old disaster.

Fresh oil started pouring from a stricken Russian tanker in the Black Sea on Friday, said officials in Moscow, as Ukraine warned of "terrible environmental consequences" from the spill.

In response to the scale of the disaster, thousands of workers from Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations, along with numerous volunteers, have been deployed to clean up the beaches in the Krasnodar region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that more needed to be done to clean up an oil spill in the Black Sea, saying efforts so far appeared to have been insufficient to deal with the ecological disaster.

The Black Sea is home to different cetacean species — some endangered — and it was the site of an oil spill in the middle of December that killed 31 of them.

Russia declared a regional state of emergency on Saturday in Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, as workers cleared tons of contaminated sand and earth on either side of the Kerch Strait following an oil spill in the Black Sea last month.

In southwestern Russia, thousands of volunteers are cleaning up the beaches polluted by the sinking of two oil tankers in the Black Sea on December 15, 2024. However, scientists and NGOs consider the resources and equipment deployed to be insufficient.

Russian president emphasizes urgency of addressing oil spill after 2 oil tankers were damaged and 1 later sank in storm south of Kerch Strait - Anadolu Ajansı

Russian investigators have determined that an oil spill from two tankers in the Black Sea last month was smaller than initially thought, the Transport Ministry said on Thursday.