MOSCOW, October 29 (RAPSI) - Arctic Sunrise captain Peter Wilcox and Canadian Greenpeace activist Alexandre Paul have been charged with hooliganism, environmental law expert for Greenpeace Russia Mikhail Kreindlin told RIA Novosti.

Earlier, Greenpeace's spokesperson Yulia Pronina said that investigators have already brought hooliganism charges against Ukrainian activist Ruslan Yakushev, Gizem Akhan from Turkey and two Russian activists Andrei Allakhverdov and Yekaterina Zaspa.

Now activists face up to 7 years in prison if convicted. However, piracy charges against them have not been dropped.

The Arctic Sunrise ship was seized by Russian border guards on September 19 in international waters, within Russia's exclusive economic zone, a day after two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea.

On October 9, investigators found drugs aboard the ship.

The platform, owned by Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is the first ice-resistant stationary oil platform in the world set to produce offshore Arctic oil.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic because they say that it is currently impossible to sufficiently clean up potential oil spills in the region, and that such drilling cannot be economically viable.