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Piracy Charges Laid Against Greenpeace International Activists
AMSTERDAM
A further 15 Greenpeace International activists and a Russian freelance photojournalist were today charged with piracy in Murmansk. This means that all 28 activists from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, as well as two freelancers, now face the charge. If convicted, the offence carries a maximum 15 year jail term.
Those charged today are:
American Peter Willcox (Captain, Arctic Sunrise); Argentinian Miguel Hernan Perez Orzi; Australian Colin Russell; Britons Frank Hewetson and Iain Rogers; Canadians Alexandre Paul and Paul D Ruzycki; Danish citizen Anne Mie Roer Jensen; French citizen Francesco Pisanu; Italian Cristian D'Alessandro; New Zealanders Jonathan Beauchamp and David Haussmann; Russian Andrey Allakhverdov; Swiss Marco Weber; Turkish citizen Gizhem Akhan and Russian freelance photojournalist Denis Sinyakov.
Lawyers acting on behalf of Greenpeace International have now lodged formal appeals in the Murmansk Lenin district court against the continued detention of the Arctic 30.
Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said:
"Our activists have been charged with a crime that did not happen, they are accused of an imaginary offence. There can be no doubt about why the charge of piracy has been brought and the legal hammer wielded. An effort is underway to intimidate us, but our peaceful passionate campaign against Gazprom and all other Arctic drillers will not be silenced.
"A profound injustice is right now being perpetrated against our friends, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters who sit in jail. I call on people across the world to stand with us against Gazprom and all oil companies who want to drill in the Arctic, join us in this fight against bullies of the very worst kind."
Greenpeace International is taking its efforts to highlight the case, free the activists and protect the Arctic to a global level. On Tuesday night Greenpeace climbers hung a huge banner from the roof of FC Basel's St. Jakob-Park stadium in Switzerland as the team faced Schalke in the UEFA Champions League - a tournament sponsored by Gazprom. On Wednesday all of Gazprom's filling stations in Germany were hit by protests.
On Saturday (5th October) tens of thousands of people will take part in an emergency global day of solidarity. Peaceful events are planned in more than 80 cities in 45 countries across the world. In Hong Kong hundreds will gather at the main harbour to form a human banner. In South Africa people will come together at former Apartheid detention centres. In Canada large audio and visual displays will light up at an all-night event. In Madrid supporters will gather in Puerto del Sol with a replica of the Arctic Sunrise ship. And in Senegal fishermen who last year welcomed the Arctic Sunrise on its voyage to preserve their fishing grounds will take to their boats again in an act of solidarity.
Today Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Russian presidential Human Rights Council, said he sees no reason to prosecute the crew of the Arctic Sunrise for piracy (1). The council is an advisory panel established to assist President Putin in fulfilling his constitutional responsibilities to guarantee and protect human rights. Groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders have called for the release of the activists, while media outlets are increasingly highlighting their plight.
Today EU regulators announced they are preparing an anti-trust case against Gazprom, in a move that could cost the oil giant $15 billion. (2)
Greenpeace has also released a letter written by Faiza Oulahsen, 26, a Dutch environmentalist being detained in Murmansk. In the letter, penned shortly before she was charged yesterday, she says: "I have no idea how this is going to end, or how long it's going to take." She describes the experience of sitting through hearings in a cage and living in a prison cell that is "ice cold" and where the lights are never turned off. "I started to lose the calmness and self-control I had been using the past couple of days, slowly but surely. Two months in a cell is one thing, but what comes after that? A sentence of a few months or a few years in a case based on lies?"
The 28 activists, a freelance photographer and the freelance videographer, were involved in a protest against the Gazprom Arctic drilling platform Prirazlomnaya on September 18th. Two activists tried to climb the side of the platform and hang a banner.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
A Republican congressman on Wednesday pushed back against President Donald Trump's push for war with Venezuela.
Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) demanded that Trump not take any military action against Venezuela without approval from the US Congress.
"The framers [of the US Constitution] understood a simple truth: To the extent that war-making powers devolves to one person, liberty dissolves," he said. "If the president believes that military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case, and Congress should vote before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America."
Massie then made clear that he wasn't simply making a procedural case against the president's actions, but a substantive case against going to war with Venezuela. In particular, the Kentucky congressman pointed to past US failures in regime-change wars such as Iraq and Libya to warn against making a similar case in South America.
"Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs that did not exist," he said, referring to weapons of mass destruction. "Now it's the same playbook. Except we're told that drugs are the WMDs. If it were about drugs, we'd bomb Mexico or China or Colombia."
Massie also argued that, if Trump were really concerned about the flow of illicit drugs into the US, he wouldn't have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who had been convicted in 2024 of conspiring to smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into the US.
"This is about oil and regime change," Massie said.
Massie: Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs that did not exist. Now it's the same playbook. Except we're told that drugs are the WMDs. If it were about drugs, we'd bomb Mexico or China or Colombia. And the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez.… pic.twitter.com/5h296rYnPJ — Acyn (@Acyn) December 17, 2025
Massie's points about the administration's rationale for war with Venezuela were echoed by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who also delivered a speech in the US House Wednesday denouncing the rush for military action.
"This is not about drugs, this is about regime change," she said. "And we also have the White House chief of staff [Susie Wiles] saying that this is about regime change. It has nothing to do with drugs."
Like Massie, Omar also emphasized the role for Congress set out by the US Constitution when it comes to declarations of war.
"Only Congress has the power to declare war," she said. "The Trump administration's military escalation in the Caribbean is not only reckless, it is blatantly illegal. We cannot allow this kind of dangerous overreach to go unchecked."
Trump's illegal military strikes in Venezuela aren't about drugs. They are about regime change.
But we must be clear - only Congress has the authority to declare war. Not the president.
Massie and Omar delivered their speeches during a debate over two resolutions aimed at limiting Trump's ability to wage war against Venezuela.
The first resolution demands Trump "remove United States armed forces from hostilities with any presidentially designated terrorist organization in the Western Hemisphere, unless authorized by a declaration of war or a specific congressional authorization for use of military force."
The second resolution more explicitly "directs the president to remove the use of United States armed forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization for use of military force."
Trump and his administration in recent weeks have been acting with increasing aggression against Venezuela, starting with the bombing of purported drug trafficking boats off the country's coast, and escalating earlier this month to seizing an oil tanker that had docked at one of its ports.
On Tuesday night, Trump announced a “total and complete blockade” of all “sanctioned oil tankers” seeking to enter and leave the country.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before."
While talking with reporters on Wednesday, Trump upped the ante further and said that the US wanted to take Venezuela's oil supply.
"Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had—they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn't watching," Trump said. "But they're not gonna do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. They threw our companies out. And we want it back."
Sen. Ron Wyden said the bill "increases military spending by tens of billions of dollars and fails to include guardrails against Donald Trump and Hegseth’s authoritarian abuses."
A majority of Democratic senators joined Republicans on Wednesday to pass the largest military spending bill in US history, handing President Donald Trump the bulk of his demands, even as he enacts steep cuts across nearly every other sector of the federal budget.
The more than $900 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by a vote of 77-20, with 27 Democrats, as well as the independent Sen. Angus King (Maine), in support. Just three members of the Republican majority voted against the bill, along with 16 Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).
Among many other items on Trump's wish list, the bill provides funds for weapons meant to counter China, full funding for Trump's National Guard deployments to support the US immigration agents, and more funds for what are described as "counternarcotics operations."
It also removes a measure that would have restored collective bargaining rights that Trump stripped earlier this year from Pentagon employees, permanently ends Defense Department initiatives to curb climate change, and excludes a measure that would mandate healthcare coverage for in vitro fertilization.
Combined with $156 billion in the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill Act this July, the package passed by the Senate pushesmilitary spending for fiscal year 2026 into the trillions—a new record in absolute terms and a relative level unseen since World War II.
The bill will head to Trump's desk just a day after he announced a “total and complete blockade" on Venezuelan oil tankers, a major escalation described by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) as "unquestionably an act of war."
The bill contains a measure demanding that the Pentagon release the unedited video of a September 2 "double-tap" strike on a boat in the Caribbean that members of both parties have suggested may violate international law.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubiodeclined another congressional request to release the video. The defense bill ramps up the pressure for transparency, mandating a 25% cut to Hegseth's travel budget if the administration does not comply.
Senate Democrats have previously voted in support of war powers resolutions to require congressional approval for Trump's boat strikes and for further military action against Venezuela. These measures have repeatedly fallen just short in the Republican-controlled Senate.
But Stephen Semmler, a co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, argued that "if the Senate truly cared about Trump seeking congressional approval before starting a war with Venezuela, it wouldn't have passed a bill authorizing $901 billion in military spending."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who voted no on the defense spending bill, said, "I cannot support a bill that increases military spending by tens of billions of dollars and fails to include guardrails against Donald Trump and Hegseth’s authoritarian abuses."
“Donald Trump has repeatedly used the military to occupy major US cities, including Portland—endangering our service members, disrupting our economy, and eroding trust in our communities," Wyden continued. “He has also shown that he will use the Department of Defense to conduct deadly military operations without congressional authorization to intimidate political opponents and immigrants through the military, to purge senior military leaders without cause, to funnel billions of dollars in contracts to his personal supporters, and to waste billions of taxpayer dollars."
The defense spending bill passed the US House last week, with support from 115 Democrats. This was despite opposition from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose deputy chair, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), said it was "enabling unchecked executive war powers."
The House is expected to vote Wednesday evening on a pair of war powers resolutions. One, introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), would block Trump's extrajudicial airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean. Another bipartisan resolution would require Trump to receive congressional approval before taking direct military action, including land strikes, against Venezuela.
"After 20 years of continuous reporting, the Report Card stands as a chronicle of change and a caution for what the future will bring," report contributors said.
The Arctic just experienced its warmest air temperatures on record between October 2024 and September 2025 as the climate crisis dramatically alters the region, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found in its 20th Arctic Report Card.
The annual report, released Tuesday, also notes the Arctic's lowest maximum sea-ice extent and its wettest year on record. The past 10 years have been the warmest recorded in a region that is heating at two to four times the global average.
"After 20 years of continuous reporting, the Report Card stands as a chronicle of change and a caution for what the future will bring," report editors Matthew Langdon Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman, and Twila A. Moon wrote in the executive summary. "Transformations over the next 20 years will reshape Arctic environments and ecosystems, impact the well-being of Arctic residents, and influence the trajectory of the global climate system itself, which we all depend on."
Arctic warming is not confined to the spring and summer months, but marks a full-year transformation, with fall 2024 being the warmest Arctic fall on record and winter 2025 the second-warmest winter. While snow levels do remain high in the winter months, they consistently drop by June, with snow cover during that month now about half of 1960s levels. Precipitation in the winter months is also not limited to snow.
"We can point to the Arctic as a far away place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.”
At sea, ice extent is also shrinking in the winter, with March 2025 seeing the lowest maximum sea-ice extent in nearly 50 years of satellite data. The oldest, thickest ice has shrunk by over 95% since the 1980s, and its domain has constricted to areas north of Greenland and the Canadian archipelago.
“There’s been a steady decline in sea ice and unfortunately we are seeing rain now even in winter,” Druckenmiller told the Guardian. “We are seeing changes in the heart of winter, when we expect the Arctic to be cold. The whole concept of winter is being redefined in the Arctic.”
Warming temperatures are also driving changes in ecosystems, with more southern species and conditions shifting northward both on land and at sea. On land, this happens via the "greening" of the tundra and the spread of boreal species into the Arctic. At sea, warmer, saltier water is shifting north, driving the "Atlantification" of the Arctic, which exacerbates ice melt and threatens to destabilize ocean circulation patterns.
Changes are also occurring on the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean, with Arctic species declining by two-thirds in the northern Bering Sea and one-half in the Chukchi Sea.
“We are no longer just documenting warming—we are witnessing an entire marine ecosystem transform within a single generation,” Hannah-Marie Ladd, director of the Indigenous Sentinels Network on the Aleut community of Saint Paul Island, said at a conference unveiling the report.
Ocean warming, the melting of glaciers, and melting permafrost are increasing weather hazards and other dangers for Arctic communities. For example, warm ocean temperatures fueled ex-Typhoon Halong in October 2025, which forced over 1,500 people to evacuate from Alaska's southwestern coast and nearly destroyed two villages.
Glacier melt has increased the risk of sudden flooding and landslides, while the melting of permafrost is leading to the phenomenon of "rusting rivers," as oxidized iron from melting permafrost enters the water and degrades water quality.
These impacts aren't limited to the Arctic. The Greenland ice sheet, for example, lost 129 billion tons of sea ice, which contributes to global sea-level rise.
“We are seeing cascading impacts from a warming Arctic,” Climate Central scientist Zack Labe told the Guardian. “Coastal cities aren’t ready for the rising sea levels, we have completely changed the fisheries in the Arctic, which leads to rising food bills for seafood. We can point to the Arctic as a far away place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.”
Outside researchers noted that the administration did not seem to have significantly altered the content of the 2025 Arctic Report Card.
“I honestly did not see much of a tone shift in comparison to previous Arctic report cards in years past, which was great to see,” Climate Centralmedia director Tom Di Liberto toldNBC News. “The implications of their findings are the same as past Arctic report cards. The Arctic is the canary in the coal mine.”
"The Trump administration’s cuts to budgets, staffing, and resources for science are already affecting data and research related to the Arctic."
Druckenmiller also told reporters that the team “did not receive any political interference with our results.”
However, the 2024 Arctic Report Cardurged a "global reductions of fossil fuel pollution," in its subhead, an exhortation missing from the 2025 version.
The 2025 report did refer to the impacts of federal funding cuts, discussing "vulnerabilities and risks facing nationally and internationally coordinated observing programs, especially amid risks of diminishing US investments in climate and environmental observations," as Druckenmiller, Thoman, and Moon wrote.
"The Trump administration’s cuts to budgets, staffing, and resources for science are already affecting data and research related to the Arctic," the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) posted on social media in response to the release.
However, even if the report did not highlight the causes of the climate emergency, it's ultimate message was unmistakable, UCS said: "It’s clear that fossil fueled climate change is having an alarming effect on the vital signs of this unique, crucial region of the world."
