ST. PETERSBURG, November 22 (RAPSI) - Foreign Greenpeace activists who have been released on bail will stay in Russia while criminal proceedings are in progress, a spokesperson of the Federal Migration Service in St. Petersburg told RIA Novosti.

Once the charges against the activists are dropped they will get exit visas, the spokesperson said. Now they can face problems with internal displacement, she added.

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.

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.