Search for a Russian submarine off Sweden's coast continues.
MOSCOW — Ships and helicopters of the Swedish Navy searched intensively over the weekend in coastal waters after detecting what the military said were signs of “foreign underwater activity” near the capital, Stockholm.
A Swedish newspaper reported that the military had detected radio signals from a Russian submarine that was perhaps stranded underwater by an emergency.
The development, if confirmed, would have far-reaching implications for highlighting how military tensions between Russia and the West have escalated over the crisis in Ukraine.
Military brinkmanship in the Baltic Sea has risen to near Cold War levels, as NATO has deployed additional forces to the area and Russia has stepped up exercises along its borders. Russia denied on Sunday that any of its submarines were missing.
Swedish ships and helicopters have been zigzagging over a portion of the waterways in the Stockholm archipelago, an area of many channels and islands, since Friday, Swedish news media reported.
Swedish Navy vessels have been searching for a foreign ship in the waters off Stockholm.
On Saturday, the country’s military intensified the search and a commander, Jonas Wikström, told journalists in Stockholm that the operation was based on “very trustworthy” information about the underwater activity, without clarifying that information.
Movements of the RUS owned oil tanker, suspected mothership of suspected minisub in distress in Sweden
Citing unnamed sources, a Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, said the hunt began after the military intercepted a radio transmission on a frequency used by the Russian Navy for emergencies and emanating from an area in the archipelago about 30 miles from Stockholm.
More encrypted radio traffic followed, this time from Russia’s Kaliningrad region across the Baltic Sea from Sweden, the newspaper reported. Kaliningrad is home to the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet.
On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement carried by Tass, the official press agency, denying a submarine was missing.
“Submarines of the Russian Navy, just like surface vessels, are carrying out tasks in the aquatic area of the world’s oceans according to plan,” the statement said. “There have been no incidents, and moreover no emergencies, with Russian military vessels.”
A Swedish Navy fast-attack craft patrols in the the Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden, on Oct. 18 2014.
A month ago, two Russian Sukhoi military bombers crossed into Swedish airspace in the Baltic Sea in what Carl Bildt, then the Swedish foreign minister, called the “most serious aerial incursion” by the Russian military in a decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment