Spy or fugitive whale? The beluga Hvaldimir was able to escape from a base in the Arctic where it was trained by the Russians

The appearance five years ago of a male beluga In several Norwegian towns it aroused all kinds of speculation. Hvaldimir – as this mammal was baptized in its day, combining the word hval (whale) and the name of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – not only caught the world’s attention for its great docility, but also for the leash it was tied with. a camera on his back with a enigmatic label in which one could read “St. Petersburg team.”

Since its first sighting in 2019, a whole barrage of theories was unleashed about whether it could be a spy whale” from Russia, due to his ability to crash into ships, interact with salmon fishermen, and even steal (and return) GoPros that had been lost in the ocean.

He enigma that surrounded the solitary beluga, which was found dead at the end of last August, could have finally been resolved thanks to a BBC documentary that reconfigures the origin of this mysterious specimen.

The documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whaledestroys the “profession” that had until now been assigned to Hvaldimir. He was not a spy as was believedbut a “fugitive” who managed to escape the hard training to which he was being subjected by the Russian Army to become the “guardian” of a naval base in the Arctic Circle.

This is at least the theory that suggests the doctor Olga Shpak, expert on marine mammals and former worker in research on these animals in Russia during the 1990s. She is “100% sure” that this whale belonged to the Russian Army and escaped from a base in the Arctic, where she was being trained to protect it.

This doctor also reveals what could be the original name of this beluga. The expert explains in this documentary that when the animal was sighted in Norway, Russian veterinarians and trainers spread the message that They were “missing a beluga named Andruha.”

According to Shpak, Andruha/Hvaldimir would have been first captured in 2013 in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, in the far east of Russia. A year later, he was transferred from a facility owned from a dolphinarium in St. Petersburg to the military program in the Russian Arctic, where their trainers and veterinarians remained in contact.

The beluga seemed to be trained to identify targets, putting her nose to point out different places, however, she was also mischievous. “What I heard from the guys at the commercial dolphinarium that used to have her was that Andruha was smart, so he was a good choice to train with. But, at the same time, he was some kind of hooliganan active beluga,” says the doctor.

And that is precisely what would have happened. When Russian forces began working with this mammal in open water, Trusting that the animal would not swim away, he simply abandoned them.

From ‘celebrity’ to a sad end

After learning to feed herself, Hvaldimir It spent several years traveling south along the coast of Norway and in May 2023 was sighted as far away as Sweden.

In Norway, Hvaldimir became a celebrity attracting up to 300 tourists per day. OneWhale then reported that the cetacean unleashed an unregulated tourism industry, with diving instructors and tour operators selling group trips to swim and dive with it.

Tourism caused him visible stress because people They offered him harmful objects and sometimes they put them in his mouth. Due to this, the animal suffered life-threatening injuries on your teeth and in your mouth. On different occasions he encountered ship propellers and sharp objects, the OneWhale organization reported.

Hvaldimir was transferred to a fjord in the eastern Finmark region, where authorities were confident that he could integrate with other specimens of the same species.

However, the NGO OneWhale announced in September on its Instagram account the sad news of the death of the belugapointing to a gunshot as the cause of his death. The autopsy confirmed shortly afterwards that Hvaldimir/Andruha died after a stick stuck in his mouth.

A premature deathsince the average lifespan of belugas is between 35 and 50 years. Hvaldimir was 15 years old when he died.

Animals trained since the Cold War

Russia has always refused to confirm or deny that this beluga whale was trained by its military.

The marine animal spy speculation They date back to the Cold War. Both the United States and the Soviet Union trained belugas, dolphins, sea lions, fur seals, sharks, rays, turtles, and seabirds for their sensory and physical abilities.

The Soviet strategy was that belugas, dolphins, sea lions and fur seals They will search for underwater mines and other objects under the sea. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, time indicates that the dolphins were sold to Iransince the marine mammal training program was suspended.

Today the Russians have military dolphins trained to solve different tasks, from analyzing the ocean floor to killing foreign divers and placing mines on the hulls of foreign ships in order to protect a stretch of water. The dolphin facility is in Sevastopol, Crimea, and before 2014 was under Ukrainian control.

In 2016, a new program under the supervision of the Russian Ministry of Defense began seeking new recruits to train fighting dolphins and seals for the Russian navy. In fact, time indicates that He offered up to $24,000 for five bottlenose dolphins.

The Marine Mammal Program in the United States currently trains bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions with the objective of detecting, locating, marking and recovering objects (and threats) in ports, coastal areas and in the open ocean, explains the Center for Naval Information Warfare Pacific (NIWC Pacific). Threats include explosives, mines, (enemy) divers, and manned or unmanned surface or subsurface vessels, specifies the US State Department.

At present, marine animals are not only used as spies by different governments and, therefore, are subject to other dangers. Cetaceans, for example, They are victims of military experiments. Animal Ethics reports that armies sometimes test the effects of their new weapons on moving targets and therefore attack animals.

The objective is observe the resistance of the animals’ bodies to attacks or extreme situations that the soldiers themselves may suffer during conflicts. Furthermore, animals can also be surgical experimental subjects so that military doctors learn to treat weapon wounds and their healing capacity.