Swedish hunt for Russian submarine sparked by interception of encrypted message, newspaper claims

It is like a scene from the Cold War: the sighting of a suspicious underwater object in the waters off Stockholm forces Swedish military forces to launch their largest search operation in decades.

To add extra spice to the affair, a Swedish newspaper reports that the mobilization of ships, troops and helicopters is in response to the interception of an encrypted message from a stricken Russian submarine to its fleet headquarters in the Baltic Sea.

The claim that a Russian boat is responsible for sparking the alert is immediately denied in Moscow, where the defence ministry insists its submarines and ships are fulfilling their normal patrol duties and that there have been “no failures or accidents”.

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