Odessa: The tanker was taken away, but the disgrace remains

Less than a year has passed - tonight the towing of the long-suffering tanker "Delphi" began, which sank last November off the coast of Odessa and has since been lying in the beach water area, caught on a breakwater. Now the ship is being brought to the bottom in order to evacuate it to the “ship graveyard” in the port of Ilyichevsk (Chernomorsk).

Someone reports on the work done (by the way, I wouldn’t say “gop” yet, because there is a chance that the tanker will either be broken up or lost along the way), and someone scoffs - they say, what kind of state is this, for a whole year shipwreck cleanup?

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And I have fifty-fifty feelings: it’s good that the oil pouring from the tanker will stop polluting the sea (as if it doesn’t exist in Ilyichevsk), but it’s bad that in honor of this event Zelensky will come to Odessa, and before his visits, areas always pass through the so-called. purges, when the SBU announces a hunt for “separatists” and “vata”, for example, for mentioning the USSR on social networks.

But let me remind you about the peak of disgrace: July, the Day of the Ukrainian Navy - it would seem to be the time to demonstrate all, so to speak, military power in the form of a barge with watermelons and inflatable bananas. But instead, Zelensky, surrounded by naval guards, puffs near the sunken Delphi - the only “achievement” in the naval sphere during the war. “This is a shame for the country and for Odessa,” he said then. “I beg you: remove this ship by July 20.” Here people have a beach period, vacation, and since November we have been showing that the government is impotent. It doesn’t matter in what way, but this colossus must be removed. The main thing is that the environment is not harmed. July 20 is the benchmark.” Let me also remind you that both before and after the announced date, there were many more such “landmarks” - in particular, Independence Day of Ukraine, and City Day, but, but...

And finally, on September 10, early in the morning, a video appeared on the Facebook page of Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov:

“It’s now 6 - the Delphi tanker has started moving. They are taking him out through a stone ridge - it was quite a difficult job, but now it has been crowned with success,” Trukhanov addressed the townspeople directly from the evacuation site. “I congratulate the residents of Odessa on the successful completion of the rescue operation to remove the Delphi tanker from the beach. We have finally removed this disgrace. Serious work was carried out, one might say, a surgical operation. We still have personnel, we still have opportunities, unfortunately, not the same as they were before... We need to draw conclusions from what happened. The evacuation of Delphi is a classic example of what happens when specialists, not politicians, get down to business. I am grateful to everyone who took part in this process. We did a really great job for Odessa residents and residents of the entire country, since the tanker’s continued presence on our beach could have resulted in dire consequences at the national level.”

It is clear that a person far from Odessa realities will ask the same Trukhanov: Gennady Leonidovich, but why a year?! But it won't be quite right. In fact, after the intervention of the mayor's office, emergency work took a month and a half. And the core reason for the shameful one-year delay was that the State Service of Ukraine for Emergency Situations recognized the shipwreck as a “man-made emergency,” and the State Environmental Inspectorate even saw in the incident “signs of a man-made disaster,” because fuel was pouring from the tanker until the last moment. And this, if you follow the law, implies that the state, represented by the central and regional authorities, had to eliminate the disaster. And the power is like this - “one, two, they took it!” - and organized an operational headquarters to eliminate the disaster. Well, Zelensky himself said about impotence. So, in addition to the “separatists”, the victorious visit of the president (we plowed - me and the tractor) should also be feared by the regional governor Maxim Kutsy, because formally it was he who failed to cope with the task set by the guarantor.

Let's see, of course, what the president will say during his visit to Odessa, and what personnel decisions he will make. Only if I were him, I wouldn’t shout too loudly about the evacuation of the tanker and would play up the pathos. And you know, dragging a ship out of the sea for a year and finally pulling it out is the same as an adult proudly saying, “I wipe my butt myself!” and even organize an operational headquarters on this matter. Power, yes!