On Thin Ice: Putin v Greenpeace (2024) s01e01 Episode Script

1
This program me contains
some strong language.
Take yourself back to 2013.
Were you going to be
doing anything illegal?
I think the simple
answer to whether or not
we were going to do anything
illegal - of course we were.
It was an incredibly
daring mission.
It needed to be done.
But the plan, I think you
could say, went to shit.
GUNSHOTS High drama
on the high seas tonight.
Russian forces have seized
control of a Greenpeace ship.
It felt like being in the
middle of a James Bond film.
15 years stuck in
a Russian prison.
How did I get here?
Dealing with Putin, this was
a different game altogether.
It's like a ticking
time bomb here.
How the hell are we
going to get them out?
So, yeah, I'm just going to
ask you a few general questions
just to kind of get
us started. OK.
Is this filming, yeah? We
are filming, yeah, yeah. OK.
Tell me about your family.
What are your parents like?
My parents?
Erm, I would say Yeah,
my parents aren't, erm
What are my parents like?
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
I grew up in a village in Devon,
and my family comes
from a farming community.
And I wasn't raised
in, like, a environment
where it's OK to break the law.
I was kind of brought up to believe
that it's not OK to break the law.
Not necessarily question the
rules, if you know what I mean.
So, speaking to each other,
before I left to do this action,
it's probably why I didn't
go into the full details
of what we were about to do.
I remember getting
to the airport.
I was going to go to the Arctic,
where I was going to
meet the rest of the crew.
I knew the mission would
involve scaling a Russian oil rig
out at sea.
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
I was 27 at the time
and certainly a
little bit nervous.
But it was my strong convictions
that what we were doing was right
that led me onto that
ship in the first place.
The entire team gathered
at Kirkenes, in Norway,
on the ship, the Arctic Sunrise.
There's a rainbow!
LAUGHTER Fucking hippies!
We spent about a week
training to do this action.
OK, you're fine? Yeah,
man, when you're ready.
Did you know anybody before
you got there? No, no-one.
Altogether, there were 30
of us from across the world.
Whoa!
One of the leaders was Dima,
who's originally from Russia.
He was a very
interesting character.
Dima. Yo! Can you tilt
your head down a bit?
That's it.
He was great, but he did
wear socks and sandals.
Yeah, typical
Greenpeace activist.
I grew up in the Soviet Union.
The work in the Russian Arctic
was very much my campaign.
OK, gather up.
The other leader was Frank,
who's a kind of
Greenpeace old-timer.
Been arrested many, many
times. I can't even remember.
Do you consider
yourself to be a criminal?
Yeah, a good one.
Wait. If someone was hurt,
we would have to put them in
the middle and do this, yeah?
Yeah.
As an action coordinator, I spent
two months putting together a team.
Sini, she was tough as it gets.
I, of course, feel a very
special connection to the Arctic,
cos I am from the Arctic,
and the Arctic nature is
It's my home.
Got a call from
Frank, the General,
as he's referred
to by many people.
I'd worked with Phil a lot.
He had the right attitude.
He was up for it.
The great thing is that all
of the people that are there,
there's a common
goal. It's like real magic.
As well as the activists,
you had the permanent crew -
deckhands, engineers.
They are the essence,
the lifeblood of the ship.
I grew up sailing.
I'd always liked reading books
about sailing around the world
and I just wanted to do that.
What's your day-to-day job?
Mostly mending toilets.
HE LAUGHS
In total, they numbered
30 people from 18 countries.
On balance, it was
an experienced team,
but there were one or two that
had absolutely no experience.
Everything is new to me,
cos I never had done
a ship tour before.
I met Alex for the
first time on the ship.
It was nice to have somebody
that was in the same position.
This was my first action
since joining Greenpeace.
Before that, I was working
in marketing in Abu Dhabi.
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
Greenpeace wasn't really
something on my radar.
But then I remember watching
the BP oil spills in 2010.
TV COMMENTARY: The Deepwater
Horizon burned for two days until it sank.
Environmental experts say there
could be a disaster in the making.
And I just thought,
"How can this happen?
"How can companies take
advantage of the environment like this?"
I realised silence just wasn't
really an option any more.
The bringing about change - I
just wanted to be a part of that.
OK, so the story so far,
we're going to the
Prirazlomnaya platform
which is expected to
start producing the first
Arctic offshore oil.
Our goal, our mission,
is to do what we
can in order to
stop their preparation
for production of oil.
To do what we can to stop them
from fucking up with the Arctic, right?
Drilling for oil is
drilling for fossil fuels.
And if we burn up fossil
fuels, we heat up the planet.
And that has a massive
impact on our climate
that can really
be life-threatening.
NEWS REPORT: The
first ten years of this century
were the world's hottest
years since records began.
In the Arctic, there is an
estimated 160 billion barrels of oil
under the seabed.
Until recently, all
those oil and gas fields
were inaccessible,
under the ice.
But because the
icecaps were melting,
these oil and gas reserves all
of a sudden became accessible.
NEWS REPORT: The Russians
have travelled to great depths
to try to prove they own much
of the Arctic Ocean seabed.
Countries and oil companies
saw that as an opportunity -
"Wow, look at that, we
can drill for more oil and gas
"and warm up the
planet even more."
TV COMMENTARY: Russia, Canada,
the US, and many other countries
are intending to drill
for oil in the Arctic.
At the time, there were more than
a dozen oil companies interested.
They all want to get
a piece of the pie.
TV COMMENTARY: With this rig,
Russia is about to achieve a world first.
But Russia were the first ones to
have a platform actually deployed.
TV COMMENTARY: The
rig is called Prirazlomnaya
and is expected to begin
production later this year.
And if they would succeed,
it could trigger
this Arctic oil rush.
And that was something
that had to be stopped.
It felt like if we didn't
take action now,
if we didn't get attention
from the outside world,
we were going to be too late.
The strategy is, spread the
information as far as possible.
People don't know
what's going on.
And we're also doing the
thing that we're really here for,
we are doing a direct action.
The plan was to sail up from
Kirkenes to Prirazlomnaya,
which is off the coast
of Russia in the Arctic.
The plan was to occupy the oil
rig for as long as we possibly could,
to stop production.
If you have uncertified
personnel on that oil rig,
they are duty-bound to pretty much
halt production and get rid of you.
But it's not easy.
The rig is in the Arctic.
It's bitterly cold,
even in the summer.
We need proper protection.
Look at that baby fly!
So, we made the pod,
a survival capsule designed
for two to three people.
It's got enough power and
provisions to last for five to seven days.
But in order to lift the
pod up out of the water,
we would first have to
catapult a rope up on that rig,
get two climbers up there, to
winch the pod up into position,
get people onto that rig, and
jam the wheels of industry.
HELICOPTER ROTORS WHIR
TV COMMENTARY: This rig is
about to be the first to pump oil
from under the
Russian Arctic seas.
Operated by the state-owned
company Gazprom,
the platform is
blazing a new trail.
TV COMMENTARY: From some
of the most remote places on Earth
comes the energy that's given
power and influence to Gazprom
and its owners in the Kremlin.
DIN OF TRAFFIC
In 1999, I was the Shadow
Secretary of State for Defence,
and Putin came into power.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
A face of a new Russia,
a clear-headed leader
open for business.
The decade ahead, Putin's
relationship with the west
was well evidenced
by oil and gas.
TV COMMENTARY: Nearly 40%
of Europe gets its gas from Russia.
The European dependency
on Russian oil and gas,
it gives Putin much
political leverage.
TV COMMENTARY: Russia's
military might much in evidence,
its army on the move
in western Georgia.
Their invasion of Georgia,
Western leaders chose very
much to try and ignore that.
We moved on, and we
moved on because we believed
this is a bloke that we
can do business with.
Vladimir Putin!
But by 2012, we started to see
something different from Putin.
The 2012 election, everybody
believes it was a rigged election.
There was only one outcome
that was going to take place,
and it took place.
Putin certainly was
sending the signals
about his direction of travel.
But back at that time, was the West
beginning to realise who Putin was?
If they did, they kept
it a very good secret.
So, what consequences can be?
I'll do my best not to elevate
the scaredness, while
The legal briefing is where
they give you the outcomes
that could happen
as a part of the action.
It's to inform everyone what risks
they're putting themselves into.
So, the most likely outcome
is that the ship is arrested,
activists can be detained
for up to three hours,
or up to 48 hours in
more serious cases.
The worst-case scenario, but it
is also the unlikeliest scenario,
the ship will be arrested
and the activists will be detained
potentially in pre-trial detention
and face actual lab our
imprisonment sentences.
RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER
At that stage, if
you have doubts,
you're free to walk away.
Personally, I didn't feel that I
could opt out and keep my job.
With the volunteers,
it's different,
cos they're not getting paid
anyway, it's not their livelihood.
It was funny, but there
was something bugging me
at the back of
my mind, for sure.
I just knew going to Russia
came with, yeah, a lot more risks.
However, once you're already in
that atmosphere and that environment
you've kind of got that kind
of Dutch courage in a way,
because everyone around
you - you're all in it together.
I've been arrested
a few times before.
It's like, OK, I did decide
to break the law in an action,
and, yes, it means
that I might be arrested
and kept in custody
for two days.
It's a part of that package.
What gives you the right to
decide which laws should be broken
and which laws shouldn't?
Like, just breaking the law
for the sake of breaking it, I
Yeah, I wouldn't do it.
But I think there are
situations and occasions
where you have to look
at what is, you know,
the problem or the threat
that you're trying to fight.
I think that much of the
positive social change
over the last 100, 150 years,
and probably longer than that,
has been brought about by
challenging and breaking laws.
Whether it's the
women's rights struggles,
whether it's the civil rights
struggles, anti-apartheid struggles,
all of those struggles
involved breaking the law
and taking the
consequences for it.
I mean, in a thriving democracy, we
should welcome civil disobedience.
Good, all right, thank you.
Thank you.
Greenpeace, of course,
want to court controversy,
because without controversy,
no-one's interested.
I don't agree personally
with a lot of its objectives
or the way it goes about
trying to make its case,
but that notwithstanding,
in the free world,
you have the right to protest.
But it's also important
for people protesting
to recognise there
are limits of behaviour.
Had the government known about
the Greenpeace plan to go to the Arctic,
I think the government
probably would have said to them,
"Be very careful.”
Campaigning in the North
Sea or elsewhere is one thing,
but dealing with Russia, this
was a different game altogether.
It's a five-day sail
to Prirazlomnaya.
Initially, the journey
was very peaceful.
But about a day after
we'd left Kirkenes
we picked up a tail
of a Russian coastguard.
And my heart sank.
I've been around long
enough to know this is the FSB,
previously the KGB.
We knew that the rig would be
protected by Gazprom employees,
but these are the big dudes.
I knew then that it was just going
to be that much more difficult.
Yep.
That's going to be their
position for the next week.
OVER RADIO: Arctic Sunrise, this
is Russian coastguard ship. Over.
Russian coastguard vessel,
Arctic Sunrise, go ahead.
Our course is
zero degrees. Over.
So, I cannot answer that
question at the moment.
We're not sure. Over.
We are in this area
of international waters
in order to conduct observation
and protest in a peaceful manner
against oil activities and
development in the Arctic.
Did you copy that? Over.
Thank you for your warning.
I am also hoping that you
will also not breach any of
the international regulations
that govern navigation
in international waters. Over.
When we finally reached
the Prirazlomnaya oil rig,
we still had our tail,
and we just knew
we'd have a lot less time
to try and get the action done.
So I decided we needed to go
at the very, very crack of dawn,
to give us the
element of surprise.
The first part of the plan was
to get two climbers up there,
and they would make an
anchor point below the helideck,
lower down the
main hauling gear,
to attach onto the pod,
lift the pod up out of the water
and then get our
occupation team into the pod
and have them safely
occupy Prirazlomnaya.
I remember getting up and it's
still kind of pitch-black outside.
I wasn't one of the
activists scaling the rig.
I would be on board
the Arctic Sunrise,
dealing with the communications.
I went up to the campaign
office on the bridge of the ship,
and then it's just, like,
anticipation and kind of waiting
until you hear news
from those on the water.
I was going to be one of the
first climbers to go up the rig.
I was in the same
team with Kruso.
Sini, how did you
sleep last night?
Ah, I didn't sleep
very well last night.
I'm starting to
get a bit nervous,
and it's hard to keep your
thoughts away from the action.
Before an action,
always, I'm really nervous.
But I think there's also some kind
of like calmness before the storm.
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
I'm perhaps not such
a good talker or writer,
but it felt like important
and right thing for me
to do something with my
body to fight climate change.
I wanted to go as
soon as I felt safe,
and I kept creeping up onto the
deck. Still dark, coming back down.
When it was
finally light enough,
the first boat set
off at top speed,
directly towards the oil rig.
We were in one of the
smaller boats, Kruso and me,
and I was certainly
thinking that,
"Yeah, this is not
going to be easy."
I was driving the
big red jet RIB.
My role was to get the
pod from the ship to the rig.
But as we were coming in,
I saw the coastguard ship
coming across
from our port side.
I remember thinking, "Oh, man,
they're awake and they're ready.
"They're definitely
wise to our game.”
It's a weird feeling
coming to the platform.
When you are in the middle
of the sea, there's no
You have no scale to nothing.
And then it's suddenly there.
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
It's just this huge monster.
As soon as we got to the site,
we started deploying the catapult
to get a line up as quickly
as we possibly could.
The first line that
went up missed.
The second line
that went up missed.
The third line scored.
So, now, we could get our
climbers up into position.
Back on the bridge, I was trying
to make contact with the platform,
to announce that we're
doing a peaceful action.
I got no response.
And that was quite worrying.
It's about that time that the
coastguard turned up at the rig.
They descended upon
us, clad in body arm our,
balaclavas over their faces.
Watch out.
There was a whole
load of collisions.
They were just coming
at us and ramming us.
But we just continued.
we'd come too far.
SHOUTING
With the coastguard being around,
we need to go for it immediately,
because you might have
a window of a few seconds.
Kruso managed
to get on the rope
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
and he started to climb up.
They were shouting, the staff on
the platform. Everyone was shouting.
SHOUTING
The coastguard had been
sent with a clear command -
to make sure that we
didn't get on that oil rig.
And now, you look in their
eyes and there was just fear.
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
That's when the tempo
was notched up even more.
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa!
Do not point your gun!
We are peaceful.
Do not point your gun.
To discharge a firearm right
next to a production oil rig
would be just
the most cavalier,
absolutely reckless
activity you could do.
The rig could blow.