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The chief executive of the Italian oil firm Eni, Gazprom's biggest client, and the Iranian vice president, Masoumeh Ebtekar, to release the activists. Eleven Nobel peace laureates called on Vladimir Putin to drop the piracy charges. Polling data reportedly show that 60 per cent of Russians approve of the government’s action, and 8 per cent consider it too lenient. Russian state media say that the Greenpeace ‘eco-blackmailers’ are financed by the US State Department and that their battle is not merely with Gazprom, the owner and operator of the rig, but with Russia itself. The activists have so far been held for 51 days.

On 23 October the charges were changed to aggravated hooliganism, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years. All 30 people were detained and, on 27 September, charged with piracy, which carries a 15 year sentence under Russian law. The Arctic Sunrise was towed to Murmansk. Protesters from the ship had previously tried to board the Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Pechora Sea between the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and the Russian mainland. Intimidation must have been part of the plan when, on 18 September this year, Russian coastguards descended from helicopters onto the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and seized everyone on board – Captain Wilcox, 27 other activists from 18 countries, including Dimitri Litvinov, a descendant of Stalin's foreign minister but a Swedish and American citizen, and two journalists – at knife and gunpoint. They had not intended to kill anyone – they had assumed that the crew would remain onshore after they first bomb – but they had certainly meant to intimidate. The French government saw Greenpeace protests against its nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific as a threat to its national interests and had ordered its agents to plant the bombs. A second bomb exploded, sending the ship to the bottom and drowning him. After a few minutes, with all quiet and the ship having settled but not sunk, the photographer Fernando Pereira went back on board to retrieve equipment. Captain Peter Wilcox and his crew of twelve disembarked.

The ship, which was docked in Auckland harbour, began to list. On 10 July 1985 a limpet mine attached to the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior exploded, tearing a hole the size of a car in its hull.