Satellite images show that Russia has placed trained dolphins at the entrance to a major Black Sea port. According to a naval analyst, the strategy could be designed to protect a key Kremlin naval base.
Submarine analyst HI Sutton spoke for the first time about dolphins at the US Naval Institute last Wednesday (27). He claims that two pens with aquatic mammals were moved to the port of Sevastopol in Crimea at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, according to the American newspaper The Washington Post in February.
According to the analyst, dolphins can be used to fight Ukrainian divers trying to enter the port to sabotage Russian warships. Both the United States and Russia have trained these animals to perform the same function.
Since the 1960s, the US Navy has trained dolphins and sea lions to protect them from underwater threats. According to experts, dolphins have the most sophisticated sonar known to science, making it relatively easy for them to spot mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the sea floor that are difficult to detect with electronic sonar.
Russia reportedly used the Sevastopol base during the Soviet era to train dolphins for military purposes, such as planting explosives on ships or searching for mines. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Crimean facility was used by Ukraine to train these animals for therapy sessions. Moscow resumed this type of training after taking control of the port city in 2014, the Moscow Times reported at the time.
In 2019, a beluga whale appeared in Norway with a harness, leading local marine experts to speculate they had found a mammal that was part of a Russian naval training program, according to media reports. The whale was nicknamed Hvaldimir by locals it’s a combination of the Norwegian word for “whale” and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
* Intern at R7under the direction of Pablo Marques