Authorities in Russia declared a federal-level emergency on Thursday in response to the oil spill along the Black Sea coast, which local and regional emergency services, aided by thousands of volunteers, have struggled to clean up over the past week. “Yesterday, together with all my colleagues, we discussed the situation, and by the decision of the leader [President Vladimir Putin], it will be assigned the status of a federal emergency,” Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-backed head of annexed Crimea, was quoted as saying by Interfax.