This unique and alleged Russian spy has blown his cover
The alleged former Russian spy has spent the past few years bumming around the Norwegian coast, where he made friends with locals and became known for his toothy grin. He has recently turned up in Sweden, where local authorities have welcomed him even as they figure out what to do with him. He’s also a whale.
The beluga whale — which is named Hvaldimir, a pun on his ostensibly Russian heritage and “hval,” the Norwegian word for whale — was spotted in Swedish waters, according to the nonprofit OneWhale, which advocates for Hvaldimir. The group said Monday it was in contact with Swedish authorities, who it said had “quickly taken action to care for the whale.” Regina Haug, OneWhale’s founder, said in a statement that Swedish authorities had “even closed a bridge to protect him.”
Hvaldimir’s appearance in Sweden has added another international element to the years-long saga of fascination and concern over how best to deal with the friendly animal thought to be a former intelligence asset.
The beluga whale was first observed by Norwegian fishermen in 2019. When he kept pestering their boats, they took a closer look and noticed he was wearing a harness with “Equipment of St. Petersburg” inscribed on it, raising suspicions that he was a remnant of a Russian navy program that was purportedly seeking to train aquatic mammals as spies. (Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied the existence of the program, but the ministry had published an ad seeking dolphins for such purposes.)
At first, Hvaldimir stuck around the Finnmark region where he was found in northern Norway, near its border with Russia. But then he was spotted last week in Oslofjord, the narrow waterway at the mouth of Norway’s capital and most populous city.
The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries issued an advisory: “Avoid contact with the beluga whale in Oslofjord.” Frank Bakke-Jensen, the agency’s director, warned that in such a densely populated area, contact with the whale could risk his being injured, “or in the worst case, killed,” by boat traffic.
It wasn’t immediately clear what had spurred his journey away from peaceful waters toward more populated areas, but it’s “most likely that he’s seeking human interaction,” said Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist and former marine-mammal trainer.
His past life, before he turned up in northern Norway, probably involved being trained by humans, Pirotta said. Since then, he has become a local celebrity, boosted by a viral video of him fetching an onlooker’s phone that had fallen in the water. Such interactions have further reinforced a desire for human interaction, Pirotta said, noting that in the wild, beluga whales are very social beings and often stick together in pods rather than roaming the seas alone.