The Mikhail Ulyanov is 250 metres long,[121] the size of a skyscraper lying on its side, and now it’s casting a shadow over Sini. It’s only going at four knots and it barely makes a noise but it’s drifting towards the jetty in Rotterdam harbour. Sini is standing at the bow of a Greenpeace RHIB. Behind her, looking over her shoulder, are Phil Ball and four other climbers – two Germans, a Dutchwoman and a guy from Finland.
A minute ago they had a plan. The RHIB was going to drop them at the bottom of a ladder at the jetty and they were going to climb it and lock themselves to the oil pumps. But then a police boat barrelled in and a cop jumped into their RHIB and pulled the kill cord on the engine. He stuffed the cord into his pocket and jumped back into his own boat, so now Sini and the others are drifting on the water between the tanker and the wharf, and their plan is a busted flush.
‘But that fucking dirty oil was coming in from Russia,’ Sini recalls. ‘I felt very strongly that I wanted to get between the ship and the jetty. I wanted to say, “You’re not bringing that shit in here.”’
Sini wants to jump. Without that kill cord the RHIB can’t get her to the ladder, so the only way she’ll reach the jetty is if she swims it. But if she jumps she’ll be alone in the water. There’s no way the others are going to follow her in, they’re carrying the same weight of kit as she is, and by the look on their faces they’re not thinking what she’s thinking. And if she jumps she’ll have to swim through a constellation of police boats and get to the ladder before the cops on the jetty can reach it, and that’s just not going to happen.
The Mikhail Ulyanov is close now, maybe a hundred metres away. Pete Willcox managed to slow the tanker’s progress for a while, he was at the wheel of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior III when she cut across the tanker and blocked its entrance into the harbour. But Dutch commandos broke into the bridge of the Warrior and seized control from Pete – ‘Okay, so what else is new?’ – and now the Russian ship is minutes from landing that Arctic oil.
Since she got home, life hasn’t been easy for Sini. Dozens of journalists were waiting for her when she pulled into the train station in Helsinki. When she was in Russia she had no idea how famous she’d become. Now she’s recognised in the street, the focus of a baffling, intense public interest.
‘It got so personal about me. In the beginning I couldn’t even go to the market because people were almost dropping their shopping baskets and staring at me. It was horrible. I didn’t like it. There were lots of people who came up and talked to me, which is not like Finnish people. Of course it was very nice if it was positive because you could say thank you for the support. But then there was also negative feedback.’
Negative feedback. She means abuse in the street from people she’s never met.
She wants to jump but she doesn’t think the others will follow her in. And if she goes alone she can’t hope to pull this thing off. But if she knew for sure the others would jump as well, she’d do it now.
Faiza Oulahsen is standing on the deck of the campaign ship Argus, 500 metres away, watching the police clear a path for the tanker’s approach towards the jetty. ‘And I could almost smell the thing I went to prison for, it was so close. The first tanker of Arctic oil, the very thing we were trying to stop six months earlier, and it’s coming into my home country. It was misty and foggy and dark and I had a flashback to the platform and the Russian coastguard standing between the Arctic Sunrise and the Prirazlomnaya, with the authorities protecting the interests of Arctic oil.’
Frank isn’t in Rotterdam. He’s concentrating on his family right now, trying to make sense of what happened back there in Russia. ‘I was in prison for all the right reasons,’ he says. ‘That’s how I feel. We were crucified and taken to the cleaners, properly imprisoned, so you knew you were having an effect somewhere, and that kept me going. But you have to compare that to the nights where you convinced yourself you’re looking at ten years for piracy. Then you’re very vulnerable. Very worried. Very down.’
In his final diary entry, on 10 January, a few days after returning to London from that family holiday, he wrote:
Walked Nell to school today. Felt very good to fulfil that walk that I’d thought so much about in Murmansk. Walking Joe was on Tuesday and I took the long path back from Finchley Road to West Hampstead alongside the train tracks. For some reason I’d wanted to do that too. I was listening to the explorer Ray Mears on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs. He mentions the driving force and reason why some survive for many days in the face of disaster. It’s loved ones. Prison is not the perilous jungles of the outback but the isolation drove me to yearn and hope to be back with Nell, Joe + Nina.
Denis is back behind a camera, capturing new chapters in his country’s long and storied history. After the amnesty he visited his newly freed friends from Pussy Riot, then he headed to Kiev to cover a revolution that would soon spark conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Everywhere he goes he’s recognised and saluted, but he finds the attention embarrassing. ‘You know Solzhenitsyn, he spent ten or fifteen years in jail, so it’s a shame when people say, “Respect to you, you’re a prisoner.” It’s bullshit. It was only two months in prison. Compare that to the people before.’ And the amnesty? Does he still regret accepting it? ‘Actually now I think it was a nice decision, because there is war with Ukraine so nobody cares about Greenpeace any more. We could easily have got three years in prison and nobody would care.’
Popov got promoted, Kieron got married, Dima quit smoking and Pete went home to Maggy. From now on Pete Willcox is going to be more careful about which direct action protests he signs up for. ‘I got a little too close there in Russia.’ But he’s here in Rotterdam, on the bridge of the Rainbow Warrior. ‘I’m still campaigning to change our thirst for fossil fuels. Turning over the world to the oil and coal companies is not an option.’
Dima’s great-grandfather helped build and sustain an empire, his father and grandfather were leading lights in a movement that brought it down, but because of a protest that lasted a few minutes it’s likely Dima will never again see the country of his birth. And now, despite everything he went through out there, Gazprom is bringing that Arctic oil into Europe.
‘I went to the Arctic to actually do something,’ he says, ‘so there’s nothing to regret. Scientists say we can only stay safe if we keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels below about 350 parts per million. Three hundred and fifty, that’s the limit. We can’t stay above that for long without fucking it all up. If it hits 400 then our kids are gonna be in very big trouble indeed. When my great-grandfather was jailed, CO2 stood at 290. When my grandfather was jailed it was 310. When my father was jailed it was at 320. Three months before we took action at the Prirazlomnaya, NASA announced that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide had just hit 400. It’s happening. This is not a rehearsal. This requires resistance.’
Pavel Litvinov sees similarities and differences between his iconic protest in 1968 and the stand taken by his son half a century later. He faced certain trial and jail or exile, whereas his son didn’t think he would face the full wrath of the Kremlin. ‘The protests are different, of course,’ says Pavel, ‘but in a way the challenge that Dima and I both had in front of us was similar. We both wanted to speak up for somebody who was attacked by a large totalitarian government. In my case we spoke in defence of a small country, Czechoslovakia, which was suddenly oppressed by its big neighbour. And in the case of Dima he was speaking for the Arctic, which also didn’t have its own defence, and to some degree the defence of the Arctic is a metaphor for the defence of humans and human rights. It is our life, because if the Arctic cannot survive then neither can we. It is our canary in the coal mine. If life is unbearable there then it will become unbearable to us. So there was a similarity. You try to raise a voice because you have nothing but your voice. A voice to speak up for something which cannot speak up for itself.’