Russian military whale fled training to the shores of Norway

Stay close, dear reader, and I'll tell ye the tale of Hvaldimir. It sounds like the name of a creature from folklore, but it is a very real whale, one that approached a group of fisherman five years ago. "The whale starts rubbing against the boat," recalls Joar Hesten, one of the fishermen that found Hvaldimir. "I heard about animals in distress that instinctively knew that they need help from humans. I was thinking that this is one smart whale."

Hesten removed the harness from the whale, which read "equipment St Petersburg." After the harness was removed, the whale went to the nearby port of Hammerfest, where it stayed for a few months. Unable to catch fish for itself, the whale would charm tourists by nudging their cameras, and even retrieving a phone for a local.

The whale earned the name Hvaldimir, as Hval is the Norwegian name for a whale, and it was combined with the name of Russia's president Vladimir Putin. "It was very obvious that this particular whale had been conditioned to be putting his nose on anything that looked like a target because he was doing it each time," said Eve Jourdain, a researcher from the Norwegian Orca Survey.

Only now do we know what Hvaldiimir might have been up to. For the longest time, he was suspected to be a former spy who had escaped captivity. Dr Shpak, a scientist who worked in Russia before she returned to Ukraine in 2022, confirmed that the whale was likely to be from Russia. "For me it's 100% (certain)," she said. However, she believes Hvaldimir was not a spy, but a guard for a base in the Arctic circle, who left his post out of being a hooligan.

Thanks, BBC.