Tag: Anapa

The Black Black Sea

On 15 December 2024, two oil tankers — Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 — were involved in an accident in the Kerch Strait during a storm, and three thousand tons of oil was spilled into the waters of the strait. A day later, the oil washed up on the shores of Krasnodar Territory. Dozens of kilometers of the Black Sea coast were contaminated with mazut (fuel oil), and fish, birds and dolphins were poisoned and died. Environmentalists have already pronounced the incident a major catastrophe. Local residents, without waiting for marching orders from the authorities, started cleaning up the fuel oil and saving birds and animals from day one. Thousands of people have been going out daily to clean the coastline. Every one of them has their own motivations and their own story connected with the sea.

“We have to do something!”: Marina, Nastya, and the Captain on Jamaica Beach

“It’s really black now! Our poor sea! What have they done to you?!”

Marina leans over a huge jellyfish stuck in an island of oil, and from the way her shoulders are shaking, I can guess that she is crying. Then she pulls back her mask and inhales a breath of the oil vapor-infused cloud. She wipes her tears away and says that she and her husband moved here from Belgorod a few years ago for a quiet life on the warm coast. Before the accident, her heart ached only for her relatives living back home amid the shelling. What is happening here now makes her heart ache as well.

“A friend from Tuapse wrote, ‘Will you put me up? Can I come there to help you too?'” Marina smiles sadly. “They’ve been coming from all over Russia, and many people are hosting the volunteers for free. Many people are feeding them. This is normal.”

A volunteer going out on a mission.

The sun sinking into the sea at her back, Marina looks like the heroine of an apocalypse movie — alone, in a protective suit, on a islet of sand surrounded by huge black stains.

They’re black oil slicks. It’s best not to step in them: they will ruin any kind of footwear. But it is impossible not to step into them, because although earlier, when the weather was colder, the fuel oil froze, now, with the temperature at +12 ℃, it has begun to flow. People armed with shovels are trying to dispose of these spreading stains by bagging them as soon as possible. As will transpire later, plastic bags cannot be used for this job: the fuel oil eats through the plastic and leaks back out. You need special bags — and you need special clothes, respirators, and goggles. They are clumsy to work in, so many people can’t stand it and clean the shore in their street clothes. They regret it later: by the evening their head starts to ache, and when they exhale, it smells like they have a petrol station inside them.

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A Little Lapta, Anyone?

The Moscow Times buys the “Cossack” myth hook, line and sinker:

“The Cossacks are an ethnic group within Russia with a strong military tradition. They often take on roles as police or security guards to maintain peace in Russia’s streets.”

In this frame from video provided by Anapa Today, Cossacks throw milk at opposition leader Alexei Navally, center right, at the Anapa airport, southern Russia, Tuesday, May 17, 2016. A group of Cossacks attacked Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his associates outside an airport in southern Russia Tuesday, injuring Navalny and six others, his spokeswoman said. (Dmitry Slaboda/Anapa Today via AP)
In this still from video provided by Anapa Today, “Cossacks” throw milk at opposition leader Alexei Navalny, center right, at the Anapa Airport in southern Russia, Tuesday, May 17, 2016. A group of “Cossacks” attacked Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his associates outside the airport, injuring Navalny and six others, his spokeswoman said. Courtesy of Dmitry Slaboda and Anapa Today via AP. (The quotation marks are mine – TRR.)

Maybe there are real cowboys left in the US, but wearing a cowboy hat does not make a you a cowboy, even though lots of Americans do just that: put on a cowboy hat and imagine they are “cowboys.” The same thing goes for the “Cossacks” flooding and terrorizing Russian public space the past several years.

Meaning, it has recently became fashionable for violent pro-regime thugs or recovering alcoholics or just plain old security guards to dress up as “Cossacks” and behave dreadfully or just gad about looking anachronistic and as if they are in charge, although no one put them in charge of anything, and if the police had any moxie they would haul them away to the hoosegow on sight.

I’ve seen such “Cossack” security guards with my own eyes slouching around Our Lady of Vladimir Church, in my hometown of Petersburg, the achingly lovely church where Dostoevsky was a parishioner in the later years of his life.

Another thing I have been told at least three dozen times by various folk in the Motherland over the years is that lapta—an alleged Russian bat-and-ball game not played by anyone for at least two centuries and that no one (least of all, the folks telling me about it) has ever seen played by anyone—is the “Russian equivalent of baseball.” Some even claim it inspired the invention of baseball in the US.

Young people pretending to play lapta so there would be a picture of people playing it for the relevant Wikipedia article
Modern young people pretending to play lapta so there would be a photograph of modern young people playing it to put in the Wikipedia article on lapta. Courtesy of Wikipedia

I think an actual nationwide lapta fad would be a great way of diverting the aggressive energies of all the thugs, alcoholics, and security guards currently pretending to be “Cossacks.” We should see if we can make it happen.

Of course then maybe the ex-“Cossacks” would start running around whacking Navalny & Co. with their new lapta bats. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.

Sources: Moscow Times, Wikipedia