In addition president Putin gave an order to the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources together with the Ministry of Agriculture and interested scientific and public organizations to determine the fate of the whales by March 1st of this year.

The President’s order published on the Kremlin’s website was based on the results of an inspection already carried out by the Prosecutor General’s Office regarding the implementation of legislation in the field of extraction of biological resources, protection and use of marine mammals.
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Russian government also was instructed to work out the issue of introducing amendments to legislation that establish requirements for the maintenance of captured marine mammals. The first report on this issue should be submitted to the President by July 25th, and then once every six months.
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12 orcas and 90 beluga whales were captured in the Sea of Okhotsk in 2018 to be sold to dolphinariums and aquariums. They were placed in the “Adaptation center for marine mammals” in Srednyaya Bay near city Nakhodka (Primorsky Region), that was called “the whale jail” be ecologists and animal activists. 
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After public intervention, active actions by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee of Russia, it turned out that the animals had been captured with numerous violations of the law. All this time animal activists have been asking supervisory authorities, Investigation Committee, Federal and regional authorities to involve experts for the rehabilitation and reintroduction of animals, but the decision has not been made yet.
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In December three beluga whales disappeared from the sea pens. At the same time captors claim that they swam away, and environmentalists are confident that the animals died.
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On January 31, the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Court accepted the production of a claim by Sakhalin public organizations against the Ministry of Agriculture, the Federal Agency for Fishery and the Federal Service for Nature Supervision. The plaintiffs are demanding the release of killer whales and beluga whales from Srednyaya Bay.
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At the same time public activists fear that the trial will go on for too long, and the marine mammal in the “whale jail” may be irreversibly damaged during this time, some of them may die.
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On February 21, capture companies filed a complaint with the police of the city of Nakhodka of the Primorsky Territory about the disappearance of one of the killer whales in the first enclosure from the “whale jail”. Animals activists believe that the killer whale most likely died – the male killer whale named Kirill was, who at the time of the survey on January 18-19 was in a very serious condition and had signs of serious diseases was kept in that enclosure.

Source: https://tourism.interfax.ru/ru/news/articles/56846/