Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a state of emergency in the region of northern Siberia, after a huge fuel leak caused the river to turn red and threatened to cause major damage to the Arctic environment.
More than 20,000 tons of diesel spilled into the Ambarnaya River near Norilsk recently, after a fuel tank collapsed at a power plant, according to the New York Times and local Russian newspapers.
The company, "Norilsk Nickel", which owns the station, said in a statement that the melting of the snow led to the collapse of one of its fuel tanks, while the oil leaked a distance of about 10 km.
The accident is one of the largest spills of oil derivatives in modern Russian history, said Alexey Knezhnikov of the environmental group "WWF Russia".
Experts stressed that this incident is catastrophic, and it will take decades to clean the damaged rivers for decades and cost more than a billion dollars. What has increased the damage is the slowdown of the local authorities in telling the government to contain the situation.