The human cost of oil: How Indigenous and ethnic minorities bear the brunt of disasters, 26 June 2020 

Last month, Russia suffered one of the worst environmental disasters in its history when an oil spill at the Nornickel plant spewed thousands of tonnes of oil into land and water in Taimyr, Siberia, turning the Ambarnaya River red. It is possibly second in scale only to the 1994 Komi pipeline spill, which was by some estimates over eight times bigger in volume than the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989...

The Komi Republic in north-west Russia suffers almost constant, smaller-scale oil spills, the likes of which amount to more than two Deepwater Horizons across the country every year. The people both of Komi and of the Siberian Taimyr region share a particular misfortune of being remote enough that the disasters taking place in their homelands escape attention.

And, as with so many environmental and human wrongs, the damage lands heaviest on minority groups. Imagine: one day, all the shops and amenities just close. What now? The nearest store is several hundred kilometers away and the land and water are overwhelmed with oil. How do you eat?