Polar Vortex

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Any other place on earth, the men with balaclavas and assault rifles who boarded the ship at gunpoint would have been pirates. Here, they were the government.

The crew of the ship — eight women, twenty-two men — had watched the late-Soviet-model helicopter grow from an insect in the distance to an overhead monster, pummeling them with its rotor wash. A few terse radio messages were fired off. Some bags of marijuana (it was later alleged) were thrown over the side. Some of the activists tweeted.

For a few moments, they let themselves hope it was just a show of force. Intimidation, like the water cannon and warning shots they’d faced the day before. They were outside territorial waters, after all; their ship was Netherlands-registered. The Russians couldn’t board the ship without permission from the Dutch authorities.

Then the rope came snaking down.

‘Here they come,’ someone shouted.

A man in green fatigues and a black balaclava dropped down the line and landed on deck. He tugged on the rope, trying to steady it. The activists crowded round him, arms in the air, like basketball players trying to block a three-pointer. Passive aggressive, emphasis on the passive. Nobody wanted to get shot.

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