News

The investigating bodies of the Russia’s investigative Committee in the Northwestern Federal District continue investigating a criminal case related to an attack on the Prirazlomnaya oil rig. An investigating team of investigators and criminologists of the Investigative Committee’s Central Office has been set up to make an inquest and they will have to carry out a lot of investigating and procedural operations. It is questioning of witnesses and work with the suspects, who are going to be charged in near future in presence of translators and lawyers, conducting a lot of expert examinations involving single-discipline specialists.

At the moment the investigators continue inspecting the Arctic Sunrise ship. A part of equipment and documents on foreign languages have already been seized. The documents are being translated and together with the seized equipment will be sent to be analyzed to find out the purposes which it might have been used for.

As the suspects are making no statements relating to circumstances or purposes they pursued attacking the platform, the investigators have to find those circumstances based on the objective picture of the incident. And this picture is the following: a group of people aboard the Arctic Sunrise with a lot of equipment of so far unidentified purpose broke the 500-meter security zone of the Prirazlomnaya platform and approached it. They completely ignored the warnings to sail to a safe distance. Then they launched several inflatable dinghies the suspects used special tools to haul themselves onto the platform. They also did not fulfill the requirements of authorities to stop their illegal actions, moreover, they undertook a ram attack on the dinghy with coastguards.

All these actions are considered by investigators as a real threat to the security of the platform’s staff and its property, and as resistance to law enforcement agents. The Investigative Committee is going to find out the role of each of the suspects in this crime. Such actions are penal, whatever the pretext they are being committed under, and those allegedly peaceful aims do not authorize them in any way.