At about 04:45 hrs, her bow broke off and sank, and 1,300 tonnes of her cargo of fuel oil spilled into the sea, causing a major pollution incident.

[9] Interfax quoted Alexander Tkachyov, the Governor of Krasnodar Krai, as saying that 30,000 seabirds were covered with oil, and would probably die.

[7] On 26 November 2007, Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations stated that it had cleaned 46.3 kilometres (28.8 miles) of coast, and that 27,994 tonnes of oily waste; 332 litres of emulsified oil and water; and 5,142 dead birds had been collected.

In April 2008, "hundreds, if not thousands, of tons" of mixed oil and seaweed still lay on the beaches of the Taman Peninsula.

Local residents were using spades and pitchforks to try to remove the pollution before that year's tourist season began.

That July, Academician Gennady Matyushov of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that the wreck was still producing a plume of oil two miles long.

[13] That November, Yevgeny Bubnov, head of Crimea's Republican Committee for Environmental Protection, said that it was impossible to clear all of the oil pollution from the water and the Crimean coast of the Kerch Strait.