The Sunday Magazine10:00The history of animal espionage
It may be impossible to interrogate Hvaldimir the beluga on his connection to Russian espionage, but if he is a spy, he wouldn’t be the first sea creature to be given a covert mission.
The whale first surfaced near Norway in 2019 carrying camera gear marked “equipment of St. Petersburg” prompting some to wonder if the whale was a Russian spy. It was named Hvaldimir, which is a combination of the Norwegian word for whale and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The whale returned to Scandinavian waters in May, this time off the coast of Sweden.
“It’s all shrouded in mystery,” Gervase Phillips, a lecturer at the
