Opponents and Supporters of Putin Regime Worked Together to Clean Up Oil Spill Disaster

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 7 – Public reaction to the oil spill in Anapa on the Black Sea coast has been remarkable in many ways, the Horizontal Russia portal reports. It was “the first time in the history of modern Russia” that people created a large information infrastructure to organize a public response.
    That was possible because of the existence of social media and various information platforms and allowed civil society to emerge rapidly and respond to this disaster far more quickly and independent of the state than has been the case in any earlier case (semnasem.org/articles/2025/02/07/samoorganizaciya-volonterov-v-anape).
    But perhaps even more striking and hopeful has been another aspect of this situation: both supporters and opponents of Putin’s policies in Ukraine and elsewhere came together in response to this disaster, a sign that those political divisions will not keep people apart when  both are faced with a common threat.  
    Indeed, the portal said, this suggests that in the future, such “self-organization will result into independent initiatives” that will bridge similar gaps.