Wrecked ‘Russian submarine’ found in Swedish waters

Swedish Armed Forces spokesman Jesper Tengroth told Sky News the country’s military was in no hurry to investigate “because the wreck was not going anywhere”, adding it is better “to come back with facts rather than speculation”.

The Swedish military is studying a video taken by shipwreck hunters who say it shows a wrecked submarine just off the eastern coast of Sweden which appears to be Russian, a spokesman said on Monday.

A Swedish news outlet posted pictures of the discovery. The search marked the country’s biggest military mobilization since the Cold War.

“We choose not to comment on it before we have seen more material”.

Stefan Hogeborn, a diver from the Ocean X Team company that made the discovery, said the vessel is “completely intact” with “no visible damage to the hull” and the hatches closed. The group is not sure how long the vessel has been on the sea floor, but it does have letters on its side painted in the Cyrillic alphabet, indicating a likely Russian origin.

Officials did not provide the exact location of the wreck, but the Expressen tabloid, which published images of the reported submarine on its website, said it was found about 2.8 kilometers off the east coast of central Sweden.

The company said the hulk, about 20m (66ft) long and 3.5m wide, was lying in around 20m of water. But since then, its anti-submarine program has gradually been dismantled.

In 1981, in an incident known as “Whiskey on the Rocks”, a Soviet nuclear Whiskey-class submarine was stranded near a naval base deep inside Swedish waters after it ran aground, causing a diplomatic standoff.

In October last year, Sweden’s navy launched a massive hunt for a foreign submarine, suspected to be Russian, in the Stockholm archipelago.