Swedes find evidence of submarine; Russians call them unmanly

It’s a disappointing kind of victory, but in the shadow war Russia is waging with its neighbors, last week’s announcement that the Swedish navy has secured hard evidence that a foreign submarine breached its waters in October is about as good as it gets.

Flanked by Sweden’s prime minister and top defense official, the commander of Swedish armed forces, Sverker Göranson, told a crowd of assembled reporters that an exhaustive analysis of evidence collected during last month’s submarine hunt in the Stockholm archipelago had definitively concluded that a small submarine had in fact violated Swedish sovereignty. He could not, however, confirm the submarine’s nationality, though it is all but certain that the boat was Russian. Moreover, there may have been more than one.

“There is no doubt. All other explanations have been eliminated. Sweden has been subjected to a gross and unacceptable violation by a foreign power,” Göranson said.

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