Free Republic

Our North-Western department has opened a criminal case on probable violation of the part 3 article 227 of the Russian Criminal Code "piracy committed by an organised group". The investigators have claimed that a group of people, probably associated with the "Greenpeace" international ecological organization approached the sea platform "Prirazlomnaya" on the ship "Arctic Sunrise" and attempted an illegal descent onto that platform. Their illegal action was foiled by officers of the Murmansk province's border-guarding department of the FSB. We must state that the ship 'Arctic Sunrise' used by the persons who attempted an illegal descent onto "Prirazlomnaya" was in...

. Activists protesting at Arctic oil drilling were thrown into the freezing Pechora Sea this morning by Russian sailors working for oil giant Gazprom. 14 activists from 10 countries attached themselves and their boats to the anchor chain of the Anna Akhmatova in order to prevent it from sailing out to the Prirazlomnaya oil platform. When the first officer sought orders from management in Moscow he was told to “use any means at your disposal to continue operations," according to Greenpeace. At 5am this morning, he ordered two Gazprom ships to train high-pressure water cannons onto the Greenpeace inflatable boats....