Dear supporter! Thank you again for your signature. We are more than 6000 by now, and it is inspiring and heartwarming to see so much support from the community!

I am writing to you with an update on the current situation and potential next steps.

The position of "Shtandart" is still hard, a small group of our ill-wishers manages to spread enough lies and the ship keeps receiving rejections from entering the harbours. However, the team is full of energy and dedication to fight for the frigate’s future. The struggle continues, and recently we got some new hope! A team of lawyers has filed an appeal to the High court of France, with a similar appeal to the European court of Justice to follow. Let's hope that European judicial bodies are reasonable enough to put an end to this insanity.

If hoping is not enough for you and you want to act:

• join the letter campaign to the European parlament and local authorities (mainly for the EU citizens) - if our ill-wishes can do so much harm by just sending emails out, we can undo this harm by sending our emails!
• if you are positioned to help financially, consider donating to "Shtandart" as legal support, which today is crucial for the ship's survival and future, comes at high cost.

If you want to know more, here is a detailed summary of the situation prepared by the Shtandart crew.

Also, Russian BBC has made a good video shedding some light on the situation with "Shtandart" (in Russian).

You can read more details on what is happening now (as of Aug 18th) on the official site of Shtandart.

Thank you for being with us in this dark time!

Anna Ilina, on behalf of the crew of “Shtandart”