Russia’s main investigative agency said Wednesday that it has dropped piracy charges against jailed Greenpeace activists and charged them instead with hooliganism.

Piracy is punishable by a prison term of up to 15 years in prison. Hooliganism charges can carry up to seven years in prison.

The Investigative Committee’s statement follows a comment by President Vladimir Putin, who said last month that he doesn’t think that the Greenpeace activists were pirates.

A group of 28 Greenpeace activists, a Russian photographer and a British videographer have been held since their ship, the “Arctic Sunrise” was seized by the Russian coast guard after protesting outside a Gazprom-owned oil rig Sept. 18.

There was no immediate comment from the Greenpeace on the latest move by Russian investigators.

A diplomatic feud has broken out between the Netherlands and Russia — exactly at the moment the two countries are at odds over Russia’s detention of a group of Greeenpeace activists.

Speaking at a conference in Bali, Indonesia Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded an apology and explanation for an incident in which a Russian diplomat in Netherlands was detained by Dutch police in The Hague.

The diplomat, Dmitri Borodin, says on his Twitter account he was mishandled at his home late Saturday. He and his two young children were taken to a police station and released early the following morning.

Hague police spokeswoman Ellen van Zijl confirmed Tuesday an “incident” with the diplomat had taken place, but she couldn’t give details. The Netherlands’ foreign ministry is formulating a response.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has confiscated 57,000 diamonds and 19 kilograms (42 pounds) of jewelry from a former defense ministry official in an ongoing investigation into corruption charges.

Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said Friday that the jewelry, worth more than 126 million rubles ($3.9 million), was discovered at the home of Yevgenia Vasilyeva and “returned to the state.”

Vasilyeva was charged in 2012 with fraud related to the sale of military assets, then said to be worth about $11 million. Russia’s military investigators announced Tuesday that they are now estimating the total damage at about 3 billion rubles ($93 million).

Greenpeace said Wednesday that 14 of its activists who were detained after protesting at a Russian oil platform have been charged with piracy, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The environmental activists from Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Sweden were among 30 people from 18 countries who were on board the Greenpeace ship that was seized by the Russian Coast Guard following the Sept. 18 protest.

More activists were expected to be formally charged on Thursday and Friday, Greenpeace said. All 30 were being held in jails in Murmansk, a port above the Arctic Circle.

President Vladimir Putin said last week that he doesn’t think the Greenpeace activists are pirates, which triggered hopes for their release. But Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday urged energy companies to adopt more stringent security measures and said the government should consider tougher penalties for those who attack or trespass on the grounds of Russian oil and gas infrastructure.

Russia’s main anti-terror agency says its forces have killed five suspected militants during a raid in the restive province of Dagestan in southern Russia.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee said in a statement that the militants were killed Friday in Derbent on the Caspian Sea. It said that security forces acting on a tip surrounded a house where the militants were holed up. They refused to surrender and were killed in a gunfight.

The Committee said that one of the suspects was the leader of a group of militants suspected of staging a series of attacks on police and other authorities and running an extortion racket targeting local businesses.

Dagestan has become the epicenter of an Islamic rebellion that spread across Russia’s North Caucasus region after two separatist wars in Chechnya.

President Vladimir Putin denied Thursday that gays face discrimination in Russia, saying that a new law that has drawn protests worldwide does not infringe on their rights.

Putin on Thursday maintained that the law bans only “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among minors.” He argued that it is “no infringement on the rights of sexual minorities” and insisted that European laws allowing gay marriage contribute to population declines.

The Russian law has prompted calls for boycotts of the 2014 Winter Olympics hosted by Russia in Sochi.

Putin said while some European nations have allowed gay marriages, “the Europeans are dying out … and gay marriages don’t produce children.”

“Do you want to survive by accepting immigrants?” Putin said. “Society can’t absorb such a number of immigrants. Let us make our own choice, as we see it for our country.”