Russia dropped piracy charges Wednesday against 30 people involved in a Greenpeace protest against Arctic oil drilling. They are now charged with lesser offences, cutting their maximum possible jail sentences to seven years from 15. Greenpeace has said the arrests and charges are intended to frighten off campaigners protesting against drilling in the Arctic, a region Putin describes as crucial to Russia’s economic future and its security. The charges against activists, who protested at a Gazprom oil platform off Russia’s northern coast last month, have been changed from piracy to hooliganism, the federal Investigative Committee said in a statement. Greenpeace said the new charges were still “wildly disproportionate,” and promised to contest them. All 30 people who were aboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise during the Sept. 18 protest, in which activists tried to scale the Prirazlomnaya platform , are being held in detention in the northern Murmansk region […]