2023-06-23 18:40:00
British Military Intelligence said on Friday that Russia appears to be training combat dolphins on the annexed Crimean peninsula to counter-attack Ukrainian forces.
In its latest report on the situation in Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense explained that a year ago Russia made “significant” improvements in Sevastopol, the main base of its Black Sea fleet.
“This includes at least four layers of netting and barriers at the entrance to the port. In recent weeks, defenses have likely been reinforced by increasing numbers of trained marine mammals,” he wrote on Twitter.
“The images show almost twice as many floating cages of mammals in the port, which probably contain bottlenose dolphins”, he said, considering that these animals “probably aim to fight enemy divers”.
Several Armies, particularly those of the United States and Russia, have resumed in recent decades the old practice of using highly intelligent cetaceans for military purposes.
Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in March 2014, has been home to a marine mammal training center since 1965. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the center was closed and its dolphins were sold to Iran, according to press reports. Russian.
The Ukrainian navy reopened it in 2012, but after the annexation of the peninsula, the training center came under Moscow’s control.
According to the British report, the Russian Navy used beluga whales and seals on several missions in Arctic waters.
A harnessed whale that washed up in Norway in 2019 and sparked speculation it was being used for surveillance has resurfaced off the coast of Sweden last month. Norwegians nicknamed her Hvaldimir, a pun on the Norwegian word for “whale” (hval) and the name of the Russian president, Vladimir.
His harness had a suitable bracket to accommodate a camera and the words “Saint Petersburg equipment” were printed on the clasps.
During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States used dolphins, training them to detect submarines, mines, and suspicious objects or individuals near ports and ships.
A retired Soviet colonel, Viktor Baranets, told AFP that Moscow even trained dolphins to plant explosives on enemy ships.
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