Two days later the Russian naval attaché in Ireland acknowledged that yes, the Admiral Kuznetsov had been carrying out a fuel transfer from a supply tanker, and that Russian aerial surveillance had also seen oil on the surface - approximately 300 tonnes by their estimate - but offered no explanation for how it had got there. The British Coastguard and the Irish Department of Transport agreed with the 300-tonne figure. The Russian Navy did not. Over the following days the official Russian estimate dropped, then dropped again, settling at 20 to 30 tonnes that the carrier crew claimed might have been spilled while washing decks or pumping bilges. The arithmetic never quite added up. Whatever the true number, the Russian Navy had not notified any authority at the time of the spill, despite Atlantic shipping lanes and Irish fishing grounds being downstream of the discharge.

The Irish Coast Guard ran simulations. Depending on weather, the slick could reach the south-east coast of Ireland by late February and the coast of Wales shortly after. Birds, dolphins, porpoises, and seals along the south Munster coast were potentially exposed. A British destroyer and an Irish Naval Service vessel were dispatched to monitor and respond. Then it emerged, awkwardly, that none of the Wexford, Waterford, or Cork county councils had a current oil pollution response plan in place - despite Irish law requiring one since 1999. Wexford's was almost finished. The others were not.

The Russians sent a delegation. It was led by Vice-Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, the deputy commander of the Russian Navy, accompanied by maritime pollution experts. The discussions focused on liability, recovery costs, and the persistent disagreement over how much oil had actually been released. The Irish monitoring operation eventually cost €250,000. Bilateral talks about a Russian contribution toward that bill rolled on. Irish Coast Guard director Chris Reynolds publicly expressed disappointment that notification had not come sooner - early warning, he said, would have made aerial dispersant spraying more efficient - but said he accepted the delegation's explanation. The official Russian apology, when it eventually arrived on 26 February, was buried in the small print of routine news. The Admiral Kuznetsov sailed home.

The slick never reached the Irish coast. The Atlantic in late February is not a kind environment for an unattended layer of fuel oil - the slick broke up and dispersed under the action of wind, wave, and biological weathering. The EMSA's CleanSeaNet continued to monitor the area until 8 March, when the last detectable traces had vanished. No mass mortality of seabirds was reported. No oiled beaches appeared at Tramore or Aberystwyth. The expected catastrophe arrived only as a warning, not a wound. What the incident exposed was less the danger of one spill than the fragility of the systems built to detect, report, and respond to such spills. A satellite could see oil from orbit. A passing patrol aircraft could photograph the carrier. None of that mattered if local councils lacked response plans and the polluter did not pick up the phone.