Russian President Vladimir Putin says the Greenpeace activists being held by authorities are not pirates, but he says they did break they law when they tried to scale a Russian oil rig getting ready to drill in a pristine part of the Arctic.

“I don’t know the details of what happened there,” Putin said, “but obviously they are not pirates.  However, formally, they tried to seize our platform.”

Putin may be sending a message to prosecutors to dial it back a bit, after they had opened a criminal case against the 30 activists on suspicion of piracy.  That’s a crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail under Russian law. Ivan Blokov of Greenpeace called the accusations “a fantasy.”

Nevertheless, those activists have been transferred to different jails in and around Murmansk, where the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise has been towed and kept under Russian guard.

The campaigners and their ship were seized by armed, balaclava-wearing Russian raiders on 19 September after two Greenpeace activists tried to climb onto a Gazprom offshore platform.