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Satellite images appear to show dolphin pens at Sevastopol Bay in Crimea
With its military manpower strained by the fighting in Ukraine, Russia appears to have devolved sea defense to a different mammal: dolphins.
Moscow has deployed trained dolphins at the entrance to a key port in the Black Sea, apparently to protect a naval base from potential Ukrainian attacks, according to a review of satellite images by the commercial firm Maxar and the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI).
Two transportable dolphin pens were moved to the Sevastopol harbor in February, around the time Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, according to analysis of the satellite images by H I Sutton, a submarine analyst who specializes in the use of marine mammal pens and wrote for the naval institute.
The dolphins may be tasked with preventing Ukrainian divers from infiltrating the harbor underwater and sabotaging warships there, which sit just out of reach of Ukrainian missiles, he said.