Beluga whale was Russian military asset – but no spy

Dr Shpak did not want to name her sources in Russia for their own safety but said she had been told that when the beluga surfaced in Norway, the Russian marine mammal community immediately identified it as one of theirs.

“Through the chain of vets and trainers the message came back – that they were missing a beluga called Andruha,” she says.

According to Dr Shpak, Andruha/Hvaldimir had first been captured in 2013 in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East. A year later it was moved from a facility owned by a dolphinarium in St Petersburg to the military programme in the Russian Arctic, where his trainers and vets remained in contact.

“I believe that when they started to work in open water, trusting this animal (not to swim away), the animal just gave up on them,” she says.

“What I’ve heard from the guys at the commercial dolphinarium who used to have him was that Andruha was smart, so a good choice to be trained. But at the same time, he was kind of like a hooligan – an active beluga – so they were not surprised that he gave up on (following) the boat and went where he wanted to.”