MOSCOW, August 20 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed an order to ban export of whales, dolphins and porpoises within the next six months.

The kea goal is to protect the population of marine mammals being in high demand abroad, including their use in aquariums and dolphinariums, the document reads.

In 2018, the so-called whale prison story made front page headlines, the Cabinet reminded. During the probe into a mammal poaching case launched in November 2018 investigators established that 90 white whales and 11 orca whales were mistreated in a local oceanic mammal adaptation center.

In February 2019, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and Ministry of Agriculture to seal the fate of mammals held in the so-called whale prison in the Primorsk Territory of Russia’s Far East.

In November 2019, all orca whales and white whales, which had been illegally captured in the Primorsk Territory of Russia’s Far East, were returned to the high sea.