A "planned provocation"

President Putin made a good point on the Arctic at the G20 press-conference: “I should say that we will not allow companies to proceed with their projects before they undergo a thorough environmental impact assessment. It is unacceptable to do otherwise, especially in the Far North where the natural environment is especially vulnerable”. The problem is that this discourse doesn’t correspond with the pressure on the Greenpeace ship, which had to retreat from the Kara Sea. This episode had very little profile in the Russian media, but the Foreign Ministry branded it a “planned provocation“. The naval deployment in the Kara Sea led by the nuclear battle cruiser Petr Veliky deserves this definition far better.