The Swedish navy is continuing its search for a suspected missing Russian submarine that is thought to be in trouble in the waters off Stockholm.
A source from the Scandinavian country revealed an underwater vessel was sighted in waters around 25kms from the capital. The military has told civilian vessels to stay out of the waters between Danziger Gatt and Nattaro island.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry has insisted there is nothing irregular involving its ships and claimed a Dutch submarine conducting exercises in the area could have triggered the alert, a theory that has been rejected by the Netherlands’ defence ministry.
Monday was the fourth day of the search, with the military deploying ships and helicopters on the mission. The navy has already investigated three sightings of “foreign underwater activity” but said it was carrying out an intelligence operation and not searching for a submarine.
A Swedish official has said all air space in the search vicinity had been shut down. He said that it was unlikely the object that had been spotted was there because of a “navigational area” as the archipelago on the outskirts of the capital is extremely difficult to navigate.
The official said that the mystery object was something that would test the Swedish response and see if they were able to detect and locate a vessel that may have entered from waters off Sweden. He would not comment on which country he thought was behind the incident, but said there have been similar happenings in the past.
During the Cold War in the 1980s, Soviet submarine sightings led to security alerts in Sweden.