At 4am local time in Russia, six Greenpeace activists, including Executive Director Kumi Naidoo, set off in three inflatable speedboats from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and scaled Gazprom's 'Prirazlomnaya' Arctic oil platform in the Arctic. They are there to demand that the Russian company abandon its dangerous Arctic drilling plans.
The six climbers have taken up positions on the structure and have interrupted the platform's operations. The activists are out of reach and have enough supplies to last them for several days.
From the Arctic Sunrise, Greenpeace Campaigner, Dima Litvinov, says: "This is the face of Arctic destruction. Prirazlomnaya is the first ice-capable permanent oil platform in the Arctic. It is a perfect example -- it is a personification of the slowly creeping industrialization of this pristine area. And especially, given the information that is coming in all the time about the rapidly decreasing ice cover in the Arctic, it is an obscenity. It is an insult that the same companies that are responsible for this crisis are now seeking to profit from it."
Greenpeace