Sweden Calls Off Search for Mystery Subs

Sweden called off a massive hunt Friday for at least one mystery foreign submarine in its waters that had worrying echoes of Cold War stand-offs, after calling the incursion "unacceptable".

The search, which stirred up memories of cat-and-mouse games with suspected Soviet submarines along Sweden's long, rugged coastline before fall of the Berlin Wall, had involved battleships, minesweepers and helicopters as well as more than 200 troops.

"Our assessment is that there was at least one (vessel)," Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad told reporters in Stockholm, saying it had now probably left.

It was the first time the Swedish armed forces suggested that more than one vessel might have been operating in the Stockholm archipelago, whose 30,000 islands, islets and rocks make the area notoriously hard to patrol.

"It's the assessment of the defence forces that probably foreign underwater activity has taken place in Stockholm's inner archipelago," Grenstad said, calling any foreign activity within Swedish territory "unacceptable".

The search was triggered after sightings of a "man-made object" last Friday -- later matched by hundreds of reports from members of the public who thought they saw "something" in waters near Stockholm.

It has also thrown into stark relief traditionally neutral Sweden's exposed  position along the Baltic Sea, an area of immense strategic and economic importance that saw intense naval activity in Soviet times.

In the most dramatic incident, Soviet submarine U137 ran aground close to one of Sweden's largest naval bases in 1981 and was only allowed to leave after a humiliating wait.

 

- More assertive Kremlin - 

Although Sweden has consistently declined to point the finger at Russia, the search has added to fears in the region about a more assertive Kremlin after the war in Ukraine.

"(It) may become a game changer of the security in the whole Baltic Sea region," Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics tweeted earlier this week about the suspected submarine in Sweden.

Russia has denied it was the source of the suspicious underwater activity, blaming a Dutch submarine for triggering the hunt, a claim rejected by the Netherlands.

"I don't want to comment on what Russia says. I have not pointed fingers at any nation," Rear Admiral Grenstad said.

He said it could be ruled out that a large conventional submarine had been active in the archipelago, but did not elaborate.

Some analysts have said that any foreign power trying to carry out intelligence work near Sweden's capital would probably rely on small submarines.

Observers said the vessel or vessels -- if they were Russian as widely assumed by the media -- would fit into a broader pattern of growing Russian activity in the Baltic.

In one of two airspace violations in September, two Russian SU-24 fighter-bombers allegedly entered Swedish airspace in what then-foreign minister Carl Bildt at the time called "the most serious aerial incursion by the Russians" in almost a decade.

While airspace violations are meant to be seen, submarine intrusions have the opposite purpose, testing how far it is possible to go before being detected by the Swedish military, according to analysts.

The Swedish defence forces started officially scaling back the search Wednesday, saying some ships had already returned to port.

Grenstad suggested the Swedish military had been in touch with foreign counterparts during the search operation. 

"We have a contact network. We have received advice and support for what we're doing now. But this operation has been entirely Swedish," he said.