UK claims Russia using more 'war-trained dolphins' for sea patrols
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British military intelligence claims the number of enclosures housing trained marine life in Sevastopol has nearly doubled.
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Two dolphins during a performance at the Moscow Travelling Dolphinarium (AFP)
The British Ministry of Defense issued a new intelligence report on Friday claiming that Moscow is attempting to safeguard the Black Sea Fleet's major base, Sevastopol, via a significant increase in marine patrols by "war-trained dolphins".
The UK military revealed satellite data of the Sevastopol harbor, which showed multiple rectangular objects floating, allegedly "mammal pens" containing combat-trained bottle-nosed dolphins.
The assessment details that “imagery shows a near doubling of floating mammal pens in the harbor which highly likely contain bottle-nosed dolphins."
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The document also makes claims that Russia is also training Beluga whales and seals for a range of missions, adding that the dolphins are "highly likely intended to counter enemy divers.”
However, there is little to no formal information about the alleged usage of dolphins by the Russian military. During the Soviet era, Crimea held a military facility designed to train dolphins, but it was taken over by Ukraine once the USSR collapsed and eventually fell into ruin.
After the reunification of Crimea in 2014, the ruins of the facility were purportedly passed to the Russian military, and a few years later, the country's Defense Ministry held a tender to acquire a handful of baby dolphins.
Russia's use of aquatic creatures in battle has long been a popular belief, with charges coming from Western authorities and the media. One of the most notable cases involving suspicious marine creatures happened in April 2019, when an abnormally friendly white beluga whale was observed off the coast of Norway.
Nicknamed Hvaldimi, he was outfitted with a head camera harness labeled "Equipment St. Petersburg", sparking conjecture that it was a "Russian spy whale." According to some sources, the beluga came from a marine sanctuary that trains whales to play with children for therapeutic purposes. Since then, Hvaldimir has been observed several times off the coast of Norway and most recently in Sweden in late May.
