Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

THIRTY

Twenty-eight down, two to go. Only Phil and Colin are still in jail. Phil’s paperwork wasn’t completed in time on Friday afternoon and he was told he’d have to wait until Monday.

The freed activists spend their time sharing stories or speaking to husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, kids, parents and journalists. So many journalists. But they need to be careful. Their legal ordeal isn’t over yet. The lawyers say they’re still charged with a crime that carries seven years inside, the investigation hasn’t been dropped, they’re already being given dates to report to the regional Investigative Committee headquarters where they’ll be interviewed by senior officers.

This is only over when they get home.

When they’re not in their rooms they mingle in the café downstairs. Most aren’t ready to venture far from the hotel. Even when the café is largely empty, the other tables are often occupied by one of several middle-aged Russian men who all wear leather jackets and have Bill Gates haircuts. They love their iPads, these men. Always fiddling with them, holding them up, pressing the screen, taking photographs.

Pete notices scratch marks in the wood around the lock on his door. He’s pretty sure they’re new. In Frank’s room the plug sockets stop working, he goes downstairs to complain, reception phones a number and a moment later a man in a shiny leather jacket slips out of a cubicle in the lobby and skips up the stairs. Frank darts away and follows him. He watches the man walk into his room. Then, perhaps sensing he’s been spotted, the man exits Frank’s room and proceeds to walk into an adjacent broom cupboard and close the door. Frank waits. He can hear rustling from the other side of the door, the sound of switches being flipped, then the door opens and the man walks out. He nods at Frank, brushes past his shoulder and disappears around the corner.

Three days after Phil was told he wasn’t yet free, the activists are stood on the pavement outside the Peterville hotel. A car pulls up. Phil climbs out and holds out his arms, raises his eyes to the sky and says, ‘Look. Look at this. It’s a sky. A sky. And there’s nothing in front of it. And… can I just do something that I haven’t done? I’m coming back but…’ then he tears away and sprints down the pavement, and keeps running, and keeps on running until he’s lost in a crowd of Russian shoppers.

A week after his friends were released, Australian radio operator Colin Russell is appealing the extension of his detention. He’s taken to a cell and sat in front of a video-link screen, on which he can see a courtroom and his own face. As the hearing proceeds, he jots down his thoughts in a notebook, minute by minute.

The judge addresses the court in Russian. Colin can see the moment of truth is coming. The judge stands up and leaves the courtroom, the audio on the link cuts out. All he can see is an empty high-backed black leather chair behind a bench.

The judge returns. He settles into the chair, lifts a sheet of paper and begins reading. He stops speaking and lays the paper on the desk. In Colin’s ear the translation catches up.

Despite the ruling of the ITLOS court, the Kremlin is still refusing to allow the crew to go home. The four Russians are allowed to be with their families in Moscow, but the others must stay in St Petersburg. Increasingly it feels like being stuck in an airport departure lounge where the planes never leave.

The biggest complaint from the crew is that they have to share rooms at the Peterville. After months in jail they want to choose when to have company and when to be alone, so everyone moves across town to the Park Inn Pribaltiyskaya, an ugly brown Brezhnev-era monolith that was built for a Soviet conference in the seventies.

Three weeks after their release they’re still confined to the city. Every few days they’re summoned to the Investigative Committee, where senior officers grill them with the same questions. Who was in the boat? Who was in charge? What part did you play in the terrorist attack on the oil platform?

Some of the thirty are becoming settled here, enjoying their freedom and each other’s company, piling into a hotel room in the evening to party until morning. But others are on the periphery of the group, factions are forming, the pressure of confinement and the uncertainty around the legal case means low-level bickering sometimes breaks into outright arguments.

And that question of blame is still raw. A couple of guys still believe Frank and Dima didn’t do enough to warn them how heavy things could get. Sometimes in the bar there’s a table of former prisoners chatting loudly and downing beers, with Frank sat alone in a corner of the room, reading a book.

The pressure is building. In his diary Frank describes the atmosphere as ‘draining’. He says the ‘continued predicament of uncertainty and group squabbles have led to a feeling of despondency’. He talks of ‘meals, meetings and mini-meltdowns’.

In the long legal summits between the lawyers and the thirty, the tension is thick. In one meeting Dima says, ‘I hope we’re still in Russia for the Olympics. If that happens we’ll make a huge stink out of it.’ And Pete throws his head back and cries, ‘Jesus, Dima. Are you fucking insane?’

Hopes are turning towards an Amnesty Bill passing through the Duma – the lower house of Russia’s parliament. The amnesty is scheduled to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of Russia’s constitution in December 1993. The Bill is set to free many thousands of prisoners across Russia, but at its first reading in the Duma it becomes clear that in its current form it won’t apply to the Arctic 30. The text covers hooliganism – the crime the crew are charged with – but only for people already convicted. Pussy Riot will qualify, but not Greenpeace. Powerful figures in the Duma indicate their support for a broader amnesty, but ultimately it’s for Putin to decide if the saga will now end.[116]

One week before Christmas Day the Amnesty Bill comes back before the Russian parliament for a final vote. At the last minute an amendment is inserted to include not only those convicted of hooliganism, but also those accused of it.[117] As things stand, the Arctic 30 are now included. At 4 p.m. Moscow time there’s a vote in the Duma. About half the activists are clustered around tables in the hotel bar, watching the debate on computer screens. When the result comes through, it’s resounding. The Amnesty Bill is passed. But the moment feels oddly anticlimactic.

Silence. Somebody sniffs. A few of them take sips of beer but nobody proposes a toast. This is not how anybody imagined it would be during the darkest days of their ordeal. A journalist approaches them. He raises a video camera, but there’s nothing to film. He asks if they can contrive a celebration, and Sini – always keen to accommodate people – fakes a hug with Phil and breaks into an unconvincing smile. Then she sits down and shakes her head.

‘They can put that fucking amnesty up their arse,’ she mutters. ‘I don’t want to have an amnesty from Mr Putin. He was in the wrong all along. I didn’t do anything I need to be amnestied for. He wants us to say thank you for his forgiveness. No way.’

The following day Putin holds his annual press conference in Moscow. It’s a national event. Two thousand journalists are invited; the questions have already been decided. He announces that Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the most high-profile political prisoner in Russia, will also be freed.[118] Then he confirms the Arctic 30 will be amnestied. But he says their ordeal should serve as a lesson. Putin says he suspects the Greenpeace protest at the oil platform was an ‘attempt at blackmail and extortion, or they were carrying out somebody’s order to stop our work’.[119]

‘Screw you,’ Dima shouts at the screen. ‘You don’t owe me an amnesty, you owe me an apology.’

Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot and the Arctic 30. The Kremlin is taking out the trash before the Winter Olympics in Sochi in six weeks. None of the activists is happy that their freedom comes wrapped in Putin’s magnanimity, but they know they won’t get home unless they take the amnesty. It’s the only way to avoid a court case on trumped-up charges, then years in a Russian prison.

But Denis Sinyakov can’t do it. He knows some of the leading figures in the Russian opposition movement. He was photographing Pussy Riot’s protests before they were famous. He says he won’t sign the amnesty. He wants to fight the case in court.

‘I don’t care about Putin,’ he says. ‘This is about my truth. My lawyer says we should go to trial and fight like lions. He says if we accept it we’ll just help the investigators and the authorities to win.’

Denis’s decision is an earthquake. Mads Christensen and his team have been told it’s all or nothing – either thirty people take the amnesty or the politics of the moment get complicated. The campaigners think the others might not be allowed to leave Russia if anyone refuses Putin’s offer. A rumour goes around that ten people have already been granted the amnesty but that the process has now been halted. People are saying the investigators aren’t signing off amnesties for the others because of Denis. But when Denis and his lawyer investigate, they find that’s not true.

Video conference meetings involving people on multiple continents are dominated by the Denis dilemma. People are throwing their hands up or banging their heads on the table, saying, ‘Can’t someone just speak to him?’ or ‘Doesn’t he understand what’s at stake here?’ It’s like a powerful wind is blowing the campaigners towards an outcome that suits both Greenpeace and the Kremlin, one where they both sweep their pieces off the chessboard and declare a draw. Denis gets fifteen, maybe twenty phone calls. He’s subjected to pressure from every corner. He’s not sure who to believe. Nobody is. But eventually, for the good of everybody, he gives in and signs the amnesty. But he feels cheated. By the investigators and by Greenpeace.

‘It means we get our freedom,’ Phil tells the others in the bar that night. ‘But I agree with Denis. He wanted to fight it through the courts. But the thing is, you can’t trust the system here. I want justice to be done and this amnesty isn’t justice. They haven’t dropped the fucking charges. The amnesty sucks. It feels shit, it feels like a letdown. But we have to admit, it’s the news we wanted. It’s the only hope we have to get out. It’s the only way we’re going to get home.’

‘In life, everything comes and goes,’ says Camila. ‘Let’s look at it differently. Maybe one day we’ll give them amnesty, but for a crime they did commit.’

It’s Christmas, ninety-nine days since the protest, five weeks since the Arctic 30 were released from prison. All they need now is a stamp in their passports that says they can go home.

Dima is sat in the hotel lobby with the head of the media team, writing a statement for the press. His train is leaving in two hours. When he’s finished writing it he pushes his spectacles up his nose and spins the laptop around. ‘Release that,’ he says, then he throws his pink bag over his shoulder, takes his wife’s hand and walks through the doors of the hotel and out onto a St Petersburg street. Two hours later, just after midnight, when his visa becomes valid, he approaches the border with Finland.

The female border guard surveys his passport. She reads a letter from the Investigative Committee explaining that they’ve decided not to prosecute Dima for entering Russia illegally. The guard folds the letter and slides it back into the passport.

‘You people are trouble,’ she says.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Why don’t you protest in America? Only in Russia. You are against Russia.’

‘Actually I’ve protested many times in America.’

‘Huh. Well maybe you should stay there.’ She holds out his passport, he takes it, she moves on to the next person. Two minutes later the train crosses the border. He’s in Finland.

From that first day in Murmansk at the Investigative Committee headquarters, Dima has felt a fist of fear in his stomach. It tightened then loosened then tightened again, depending on how scared he was, but it was always there. But when the train crosses the frontier, it lets go. And for the first time he feels truly free.

As he’s heading towards Helsinki, the rest of the crew are gathered in the hotel bar, coming to terms with a wide selection of potent Russian alcohol. That night everybody stays up until 4 a.m. They want to spend every last minute together. It could be a long time before they see each other again. An hour after they call it a night, their alarms go off. Alex, Sini and Camila sit on the bed in Alex’s room and hold each other. It’s time to leave.

At St Petersburg airport activists are dispersed across the check-in counters, about to scatter to destinations all over the surface of the Earth. Alex, Kieron, Phil, Anthony and the British engineer Iain Rogers are flying to Paris then taking the train into London. Po-Paul is with them, he’s taking a connection to Montreal. But Frank isn’t. He’s leaving alone, heading for a rendezvous with a family holiday.

The plane to Paris is full. Almost all the other passengers are well-dressed Russians. The aircraft taxies onto the runway then waits. Five minutes pass, another five, nothing. Nobody says much. Anthony makes a phone call, the others just stare ahead, waiting. Finally the engines fire and the plane launches down the runway. As it lifts off, Phil punches the air.

In Paris they board the Eurostar, destination London. It races through northern France, towns and villages fly past the window. There’s a sucking sound as the train enters the Channel Tunnel, and twenty minutes later they burst out into the English countryside. The train slows as they approach St Pancras station in London. When it pulls into the platform the station manager jumps into their carriage and tells them to wait. She says there are many journalists waiting on the concourse, more than eighty, maybe a hundred.

The manager asks them to follow her. She leads them through passport control and customs. As they approach the open doors to the concourse Alex can see people lining the staircase, the buzz from the media throng is palpable. A press officer skips ahead and peers around the corner. There’s a bank of cameras there, more than anybody imagined. The press officer walks back to the five activists and asks them to pause for a second.

‘There are loads of journalists there. Shitloads. Are you ready?’

But before any of them can answer, Anthony has pushed past and the others are following him. They walk through the doors, the flashlights explode and their loved ones surge from the crowd with open arms.

At the station in St Petersburg, Sini and Kruso are climbing onto a train. Sini’s journey home will be short, just three hours, while Kruso is going overland back to Switzerland. The media interest in Sini is huge, a scrum of journalists is expected in Helsinki, some are planning to board the train as soon as it’s on Finnish soil. Kruso’s never been comfortable with the media so he’s booked a seat a few carriages down from her.

As the train pulls out of St Petersburg, Sini feels an odd sense of deflation. She stares out of the window, confused, searching her body for the euphoria she was expecting. Even when she presents her passport to the Russian border guards and they stamp it without a second look, she feels nothing. They cross the frontier. She’s in Finland now. Russia is behind her and Sini thinks, okay, this should feel like something, but it doesn’t.

I still don’t feel anything.

She needs to be with Kruso. She needs to be with him and she doesn’t care about anything else. Her thoughts right now are impossible to make sense of alone, without the others she was jailed with. She can’t feel it without Kruso.

Sini gets up and walks down the train, pushing through doors and passing through successive carriages, until eventually she finds him. He’s sitting alone, staring at the passing countryside. She falls into the seat next to him and throws her arms around him and holds him as tightly as she can, just like she did when they were surrounded by soldiers on the deck of that Russian coastguard ship, one hundred and one days ago.