Jets Scrambled, Sub Killer Vessels hunt for Russian sub amid the new Cold War
A mysterious vessel suspected of being a Russian submarine is spotted off the Stockholm archipelago.
The Kremlin issues vehement denials and points fingers at another country.
Unsubstantiated reports soon proliferate, including one that an enigmatic man in black has been spotted wading near the craft, a would-be spy on a secret mission.
The events leading to a five-day search for an underwater vessel off the coast of Sweden that may not exist has the makings of a Cold War thriller.
On Tuesday, the Swedish Defense Ministry said that a military search team of 200 personnel aboard ships, helicopters and minesweepers, was continuing to scour the Baltic Sea not far from Stockholm in search of an unidentified foreign vessel, in what Ingela Nilsson, a Swedish Defense Ministry spokeswoman, called the biggest such mobilization since the end of the Cold War.
Swedish Navy vessels have been searching for a foreign ship in the waters off Stockholm.Sweden Hunts for Source of Underwater SignalsOCT. 19, 2014
“The Hunt for Reds in October,” as the search has been dubbed on social media, has captured the global imagination at a time when Russia’s incursion into Ukraine — and reports of other perceived provocations — has raised East-West tensions to a level not seen in decades. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said in a statement Tuesday that it had scrambled fighter jets for the second day in a row to intercept Russian military aircraft over the Baltic Sea.
A photograph taken by an amateur photographer on Sunday shows a dark object protruding from the water, evidence of "foreign underwater activity," according to the Swedish defense ministry. Credit Swedish Defence/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But the search has also spawned enough conspiracy theories, claims and counterclaims to fill a Tom Clancy novel. There has been speculation online and on social networks that Moscow has been trying out the prototype for a minisubmarine with the pep of a speedboat. The Swedish news media has also reported the sighting of a mysterious man in black wading into the water near a military base on Korso, suggesting a Russian-style James Bond sent to infiltrate from abroad.
The Swedish Defense Ministry said that the hunt for the vessel began at lunchtime Friday after several citizens reported spotting underwater movements near the Stockholm archipelago. The Swedish news media reported that the military had detected a distress call from a suspected Russian submarine possibly stranded underwater. Adding to the intrigue, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported that Sweden had intercepted encrypted messages relayed between the Stockholm archipelago and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic fleet.
Ms. Nilsson stressed on Tuesday that it was not clear if the vessel was a submarine and what country it came from. But she said that the military was being vigilant at a time of assertiveness by the Russian military. For Sweden, a neutral country that is a member of the European Union but is not in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the hunt for the vessel, she said, has gripped the popular consciousness.
While the intrigue dominated newspaper headlines and dinner table banter, she added, everyday Swedes were not fearful. “I don’t think the normal person is afraid that Russia is going to invade us,” she said by phone from Stockholm. “People are more concerned about Ebola.”
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In Sweden, where memories of the Cold War run deep, the episode recalled the “Whisky on the Rocks” episode in 1981, when a Soviet submarine hit an underwater rock off Karlskrona, leading to a standoff that lasted more than a week. The Swedes suspected there were nuclear weapons aboard. While the Soviet captain — whom Swedish officials at the time identified as Lt. Cmdr. Pyotr Gushin — was being questioned aboard a Swedish torpedo boat in the company of two Soviet diplomats, the submarine was pulled off the rock by the Swedes.
In this latest sighting of a suspicious vessel, Russian officials emphatically denied that the vessel was theirs, and instead suggested that it could be a Dutch submarine. But Dutch defense officials denied that suggestion Tuesday. Marloes Visser, a spokeswoman for the Dutch Ministry of Defense in The Hague, said by phone that the Netherlands had participated in an exercise in Sweden that ended on Friday, but at the time the mystery submarine was spotted on Friday, the Dutch vessel, Bruinvis, was safely anchored in Tallinn, Estonia. It is now on its way back to Netherlands, she said.
“All our submarines are accounted for,” she said.
As to why the Russians pointed to the Dutch, she said, “I don’t know what to think. It wasn’t one of our ships. Everyone was looking at us. But you have to ask the Russians.”
The Russians have said repeatedly that they have not lost a submarine and the Defense Ministry has denied sending underwater vessels into Swedish waters. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government newspaper, said Monday that the Swedes might be seeing ghosts or creating Russian boogeymen to create a perceived threat to justify its forward posture.
“In fact this version fits well the spy hysteria that has recently gripped many western countries,” the newspaper reported. “Just like during the time of the Cold War, they see Russian provocations everywhere.”
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