Disinfo: Sweden caught a buoy instead of a Russian sub

Summary

A final report has been published in Sweden on the extraordinary military operation in 2014, when an unsuccessful search for an alleged “Russian mini-submarine” took place. Swedish media reports that the document concludes that a “coded signal”, detected by the Swedish Navy, as a suspected signal from the mini-submarine, in fact emerged from a malfunctioning meteorological buoy.

Disproof

The Swedish Armed Forces detected a suspected violation of Sweden's Internal territorial waters in October 2014. A report of the incident was published in 2015, concluding that there was, beyond reasonable doubt, proof that Swedish internal territorial waters were violated. The report concludes that the combined evaluation of reports provide a very high level of confidence. They signal from the above mentioned buoy had, at the time of the report, been excluded from the analysis of the collected data. The press release (in Swedish) on the report can be found here. Here is a translation of key parts of the press release:

Of the roughly 300 reports that came in approximately 150 has been analysed in further detail of which 21 were judged to be particularly interesting. Following the analysis several of these have now received a higher classification compared to the earlier analysis. The combined evaluation based on the amount of observations in the area provide a very high level of confidence. The observation that last autumn was judged to be of the highest level of confidence has been reevaluated. Here additional information have come to light that give this particular observation another explanation, and as such it is not included in the basis for the combined evaluation. Despite this the conclusion remain that through the analysis work it is concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the Swedish internal waters have been violated.

The Swedish Armed Forces does not attribute the violation to any nation.

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  • Reported in: Issue 169
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 16/10/2019
  • Outlet language(s) Russian
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: Sweden
  • Keywords: Military, Russophobia
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