Russia has been accused of training a spy which have emerged in Swedish waters in recent weeks.
Vladimir Putin has been under severe scrutiny ever since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and any activity in the West has been taken as suspicious.
This includes the "underwater special forces" that the Kremlin has undertaken following the discovery of Hvaldimir - the 'Russian spy' found in Sweden.
However, Hvaldimir is not your usual spy as he is actually a young beluga whale. As ridiculous as it may sound, the mammal, whose name is a Norwegian play on the Russian leader's name, is allegedly a product of animal training in the country.
Hvaldimir is thought to have been trained by the Murmansk Sea Biology Research Institute after a Russian state-controlled TV station admitted that the military had been trying to train whales, dolphins and seals in 2017.
Although no official line of training has been confirmed to exist, the report suggested belugas like Hvaldimir had been trained to guard naval base entrances, "assist deep water divers and, if necessary, kill any strangers who enter their territory".
Russia has a history of training dolphins for defence purposes including the clearance of underwater mines and the protection of military sites and ships from the threat of covert enemy divers. The Russian government first started exploring the military uses of marine mammals at the Sevastopol naval base during the Soviet era.
It’s not just the Arctic that has shown signs of increased use of Russian marine mammals. In 2018, the Black Sea Fleet’s dolphins were deployed for several months to Russia’s Mediterranean Sea naval base in Tartus, Syria, according to satellite photos.
Hvaldimir was first spotted swimming just off the waters of Norway by fishermen in 2019 when his keenness for human interaction brought 'red flags'.
He was discovered wearing a harness fitted with a GoPro camera mount and clips bearing the inscription "Equipment of St Petersburg".
Those alarms were raised once more when organisation OneWhale, which spent years of tracking Hvaldimir, noticed the beluga whale's usual movements from Norway's far north were quickly sped up out of the country's waters.
One theory is that the whale, which was lonely and malnourished, escaped a marine pen and was taken to a Russian submarine base in the Barents Sea which specialises in underwater research and secret operations.
However, it could have been as simple as being high hormone levels for a mate or in a bid to find other beluga whales.
