01x01 - Episode 1

[bunniefuu]

This program me contains

some strong language.

Take yourself back to 2013.

Were you going to be

doing anything ill*gal?

I think the simple

answer to whether or not

we were going to do anything

ill*gal - 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 sh*t.

g*nshots 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 b*mb 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 g*n!

We are peaceful.

Do not point your g*n.

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.