BALACLAVA: CRIMEAN PORT WHERE DOLPHINS WERE TRAINED TO FIGHT THE NAZIS….

… COULD THEY STILL BE PART OF PUTIN’S WORLDWIDE ARMY?

ASKS BRIAN OGLE

The writer at Balaclava harbour – the nuclear submarine base is underneath the cliff beside the Ukrainian navy patrol boat, now it’s back under Russian control and of course off limits to tourists

WHEN visiting Crimea just a few months before Putin’s ‘Little Green Men’ took over and annexed the peninsula for Russia, I was lucky enough to take a tour of what had been a Russian nuclear submarine base under the cliffs in the port of Balaclava, just a short drive from the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War.

At that time the submarine base was under the control of the Ukraine navy, and had been turned into a very interesting tourist attraction. It had concrete bomb-proof doors many metres thick at either end of the underground storage facility, and enabled tourists to gain a valuable insight into the USSR’s almost paranoid Cold War mentality and constant fear of nuclear attack from the West on its larger cities all over the Soviet world.

Man’s best friends in the sea, dolphins, fought for the USSR in the past, and perhaps are still being trained for Russian covert operations

One of the more unusual things I learned from the visit was that the USSR used dolphins to protect the Crimean coast around Balaclava and Sevastopol, training the mammals and strapping them with explosives to seek out and destroy Nazi shipping and even to find frogmen who might have been attempting sabotage on ships and submarines.

Looking out over the entrance to Balaclava harbour in the Black Sea off Crimea

If it seems a bit far fetched and cruel to use ‘kamikaze’ dolpins in what was called ‘The Great Patriotic War’, (Second World War) , a story on a Ukraine news website ‘112 International’ the other day speculates that the Russians are still using dolphins as weapons of war, this time in Syria.
The story suggests that satellite imagery of the port of Tartus in 2018 – Russia’s submarine base in Syria – had shown up identifiable marine mammal pens, which were likely to house dolphins, seals or even beluga whales.
According to the article: “The dolphins would likely be used to counter enemy divers who might try to sabotage ships in the port. The marine mammals might also be used to retrieve objects from the sea floor or to perform intelligence missions. The dolphins in Syria likely come from a unit based near Sevastopol, Crimea, in the Black Sea.”
Sevastopol has long been Russia’s major naval base in the Black Sea – even operating there under a lease arrangement from the Ukraine government when the USSR disintegrated – and is very close to the base under the cliffs which I visited in the beautiful natural harbour of Balaclava.

The Ukraine Armed Forces guide to the nuclear submarine base under the cliffs at Balaclava

However, the fact that Russia is even today using marine mammals in covert operations also hit the world news headlines in April 2010 when a tame Beluga whale turned up in Norway. That whale, nicknamed ‘Hvaldimir’, is believed to have escaped from a Russian Navy training programme.
The 112 International story continues: “We may never know exactly what the Russian Navy was doing with dolphins in Syria. They were only there for a few months, from September to December 2018, so it may have been a test. Or it may not have ended well.”
However, it is still interesting and rather shocking to hear that these intelligent, friendly, inquisitive creatures are still being exploited and employed in Russian covert operations or perhaps even war……