An alleged distress call in Russian, which led Swedish media to speculate that a Russian submarine was lurking near Stockholm, actually never existed, a new report has said. The futile week-long navy hunt cost some $2.8 million, reports GHN based on RT.
The Swedish Navy's operation was prompted two weeks ago by a tip from the public - a grainy picture, which some interpreted as showing a small submarine. While military officials were careful not to single out any nation and referred to ‘foreign underwater activity,' Swedish media suggested the object in the picture was a Russian submarine conducting a clandestine operation in Swedish waters.
The reports claimed that Russian involvement was detected through an alleged communication from the submarine to a base in Russia's Kaliningrad, at frequencies reserved for distress calls. But the Dagens Nyheter daily said on Monday that no such exchanges had been intercepted by Sweden's signal intelligence.
The newspaper, citing freedom of information requests to the military and its own sources, said the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt or FRA), Sweden's signal intelligence agency, knows nothing about the alleged distress calls and didn't notice any unusual spikes in communication with Kaliningrad at the time.
"I'd be glad to read about that emergency call myself. But it didn't happen, this information is incorrect,"the newspaper cites a source as saying.
The navy operation, which was dubbed ‘Hunt for the Reds in October' by the Swedish media, was reminiscent of the Cold War era, when Swedish warships patrolled the Baltic Sea looking for Soviet submarines.