In Murmansk SIZO-1 the prisoners are still fighting the regime, but they’re not winning. ‘I got a letter just two weeks ago from my cellmate,’ says Denis. ‘The situation there is terrible now, it’s much worse than in our time. Those conditions were good, created specially for us. We had two or three cellmates in one room and we were allowed this doroga. We had TV sets and some people from a local NGO came to check on us. But when we left the prison nobody came to them and the authorities took away their TV sets. Now there are body searches and night searches almost every day and the meals have become water.’
Martin Sixsmith – the ex-BBC man – is on his way to lunch with the former director of MI5, when he makes time for a cup of Darjeeling tea with some of the campaigners. Together they conduct a post-mortem on why Putin freed the Arctic 30.
‘One word,’ says Sixsmith. ‘“Sochi”. Putin was clearing the decks before the Olympics. It wasn’t a surprise that Pussy Riot got out, and I wasn’t at all surprised that the Arctic 30 got out. Khodorkovsky, that was the big surprise. It’s the old thing about speaking quietly while carrying a big stick. Greenpeace had that stick. The Olympics.
‘You guys said your plan was to give him “a wide turning circle”. That was sensible. It gave him room to back down. Right now our governments are hammering away at Putin, accusing him of everything without understanding his dilemma, giving him no margin to make concessions and be sensible. It was absolutely clear that Greenpeace had to give him that opportunity to back down without losing face. He didn’t want to keep the thirty in jail for ever, they would have been a thorn in his side. So he wanted to let them go, but he wanted to do it on his terms. It was the right thing to not hammer away at him, shouting and screaming. That way he could present the release as an act of magnanimity rather than him being bullied into it.
‘If you look at it objectively, I think Putin played it just right. He showed himself to be tough then he let the thirty go. He showed himself to be magnanimous, having made his point, so everybody was happy. Yes, Greenpeace was petrified their people would never get out, but they were happy eventually. But most importantly his voters were extremely happy because they saw him standing up for them. Putin’s image is this non-drinker, a judo fanatic, ex-KGB, takes no nonsense, dresses smart and stands up to the West. Stands up to people like the activists on that ship. So it was really important for his image to do what he did. When Putin does his analysis he’ll probably think he came out on the plus side.
‘Was it naïve of Greenpeace to think they could go in there, poke the bear and walk away? I assume the campaign leaders took all that into account when they went out there. They knew they’d be arrested, and in terms of publicity, having the guys arrested and jailed was a PR bonanza. It was unfortunate for the ones in jail, but good for the campaign.’
By the time they were freed, 2.7 million people had called for the release of the Arctic 30. Millions more are demanding a sanctuary at the top of the world where oil drilling and industrial fishing are banned. Something similar already exists in Antarctica after a campaign that took nearly twenty years to win. The push for an Arctic sanctuary may take longer, but the movement is mobilising. The fossil fuel companies have colonised almost every corner of the Earth, but if that movement can draw a line in the ice, if it can make its stand in the Arctic and win, then it can roll south and challenge the rule of oil across the globe.
Two weeks before the action at the Prirazlomnaya, one of the seven Arctic states, Finland – Sini’s home country – became the first nation to join the call for an Arctic sanctuary. Six months later the European Parliament echoed that call.
Sometimes someone just has to jump first.
‘As long as they continue with their dangerous plans then we’re going to be there,’ says Sini. ‘The Arctic oil industry has decided to keep going, so we have to keep going too. It’s not like we want to, but standing against them gives me a belief that we can actually win.’
Right now Sini’s boat is drifting on the wake, floating away from the jetty as the Mikhail Ulyanov comes in. It’s nearly docked now. She can see the faces of the Russian crew leaning over the railings and staring down at her. If she’s going to jump, it has to be now.
She throws herself forward, for a split second she’s hanging in the air then she crashes into the water. The cold is paralysing, she sinks below the surface but her life jacket lifts her, she gasps for air, shakes her head then kicks her legs. Back on the RHIB, Phil rolls his eyes. Everything inside him is saying, oh shit, now you have to jump as well. He hates swimming and he’s got all this kit strapped to him. ‘But I can see the ship, that big bastard ship, it’s so close and if we can get to the jetty we stand a real chance of stopping it. And Sini was already swimming for it.’ He coughs into his hand and steps up onto the side of the RHIB. ‘And I just did it. I threw myself in.’
The police take a moment to notice what’s happening, but the cops on the jetty don’t move and the boats in the water are too far away to reach them. Sini turns her head and looks back and sees Phil swimming behind her. And the other climbers are launching themselves into the sea as well. A moment later they’re all in the water, kicking hard, six of them, all weighed down with kit but getting closer. Then Sini reaches out and grabs the bottom rung of the ladder and hauls herself up.
Faiza is watching from the deck of the Argus, but the huge hull of the Mikhail Ulyanov is blocking her view and she can’t see what’s happening. Then her phone rings. It’s the team on the jetty. They tell her they’re hanging from the ladder, stopping that tanker from unloading its cargo of Arctic oil.
‘For me it was very logical,’ Sini remembers. ‘The issue hadn’t changed, it was the same fucking dirty oil, why wouldn’t I protest against it? They’d started drilling and this was the first oil coming from that platform. My motivations hadn’t changed in jail, if anything they’d become stronger. So in the end, whether or not I’d jump, I guess it wasn’t really a question.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In September 2013 I took a phone call from Mads Christensen, at the end of which he asked me to lead the international media team pushing for the release of the Arctic 30.
‘We need to make them famous,’ he said. Then he hung up.
I lowered the phone and wondered if I’d actually agreed to take the job. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, so I guessed that meant I was doing it. Suffering as I do from acute imposter syndrome, I thought momentarily about calling him back and politely declining the offer, but I knew half the people in jail and some of them were good friends. I’d climbed power station chimneys with them and broken into polluting factories at their side. I’d sailed to Greenland with Iain Rogers, Colin Russell and Mannes Ubels. I was slated to join the Sunrise on its mission to the Russian Arctic, but my boss wouldn’t let me go and Alex went instead. It could have been me in that Russian prison cell.