The Russian whistleblower risking it all to expose the scale of an Arctic oil spill catastrophe
By Mary Ilyushina, CNN
Updated 2:47 PM ET, Fri July 10, 2020
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Ryabinin says he was first alerted to the scale of the crisis on May 29 by photographs posted on Instagram. He was immediately alarmed: the Daldykan and another river polluted by the spill flow into Lake Pyasino. From there, the contamination could spread all the way to the Arctic Ocean.
Just a few hours later he was at the river, taking photographs that would soon provoke a public outcry. He and his boss tried to get in to the Nornickel plant, but he says they were refused entry by police.
More than 20,000 tons of diesel poured into the rivers from the storage tank, according to Nornickel.
Foaming red sludge mixed with the water and sucked life from the rivers and their banks.
"It looked horrible when we got there and it wasn't even the worst of it as a couple of hours had passed," Ryabinin says. "You could smell the diesel half a kilometer away... my boss was even afraid to smoke there in case it blew up."
What he saw was very different from what officials and media were later reporting: that the spill had swiftly been brought under control. Russian state TV ran reports showing aerial pictures of oil-spill booms guarding the crimson layer of diesel.
more:
http://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/europe/arctic-oil-spill-russia-whistleblower-intl/index.html
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