TODAY: Greenpeace activists charged with piracy; Putin announces plans to resuscitate Arctic military base. EU regulators may charge Gazprom; Kasparov wins ECHR backing; the plight of Sochi migrant workers; mob attack on Russian embassy in Libya.

All 30 Greenpeace activists arrested when protesting against Arctic oil drilling have now been charged with piracy, despite an admission from President Putin that they are obviously not pirates.  They face maximum penalties of 15 years jail time.  According to one poll, a majority of Russians approve of the treatment of the environmentalists; Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of Russia’s Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, is not among them however and cited the arrest of photographer Denis Sinyakov as a particular cause of concern.  In the first public remarks by the company since the Greenpeace protest, Gazprom has announced that its Prirazlomnoye Arctic oil project will be operational by the end of the year as planned.  At a meeting with United Russia, Putin has underscored Russia’s commitment to its presence in the Arctic, ‘an unalienable part of the Russian Federation’, to which end Moscow will restore a Soviet-era military base there.