The Russian Invasions of the UK and Sweden

Recently, I had a political discussion with a person who thinks that what you see and read in the
mainstream media (from now on, MSM) is generally accurate. This paper is a result of that discussion.

We were discussing Russia. Because this person tends to believe what they see and read in the media,
they obviously have a very negative view about Russia. I asked for an example of a recent news story
that contributed to their negative view, and the person brought up an incident from last summer (it is
currently spring of 2017, so I am referring to the summer of 2016) where a Russian military ship was
"intercepted" in the English Channel. The person felt that the Russians are continually using their
military in a provocative way, and this was one example of it.

I looked up the incident, and assumed the person was referring to the story of the Stary Oskol, which is a
Russian submarine that passed through the English Channel on 7 June 2016.1 As we will see, the media
portrayed this event like all stories about Russia - by putting them in a very negative light. As usual, the
Russian side of the story was not presented. There were some stories in the Russian media, however,
that did present their side on the story. As you might expect, their version of events is somewhat
different than what was reported in the Western MSM.

Let's look at the details of this incident and see if we can find out which side is telling the truth, and
which side is lying.2

Media coverage in the US

Let's start by looking at the major articles that covered the Stary Oskol incident in the US. Here they are:

"British Royal Navy Shadows Russian Submarine Near U.K. Waters", Newsweek, 8 June

"The British Navy Intercepted a Russian Submarine on its Way to the English Channel", Business
Insider, 8 June

"Here's What it Looks Like When a Russian Submarine Gets Intercepted by the Royal Navy",
Business Insider, 9 June

You likely have never heard of the Business Insider (BI), and maybe you're wondering why two out of my
top three articles are from this online news source. The reason is because Yahoo news frequently caries
articles from BI, and this makes them very widely read. You likely read BI regularly without knowing it.
(In 2009, BI was in financial trouble. By 2015, it was valued at 442 million). Yahoo news carried the two

1
It turns out that the Stary Oskol is not the incident the person was referring to, but it makes no difference. I will
end up talking about propaganda surrounding Russian subs in general, and the Stary Oskol incident is as good a
place as any to start. I will cover the actual incident the person referred to in the paper as well.
2
As is usually the case when I write something, the subject expanded as I wrote. As a result, this paper actually
addresses the propaganda surrounding Russian subs in general, over the past several decades, but both the
starting point and the main focus will be about the Stary Oskol incident. At the end I will also discuss a story about
a Russian non-submarine in the English Channel. It's all connected somehow.

1
BI articles cited above, and the vast majority of Americans that heard of this story read about it in these
articles.

For this reason, we'll focus on these two BI articles.

Media coverage elsewhere

The following six articles about the Stary Oskol incident are from the UK3:

"Hunt for Reds Off Dover: Putin Sends Attack Submarine into English Channel Just Days Before
England's Russia Clash at Euro 2016", The Sun, Tuesday, 7 June

"Vladimir Putin 'Sends Attack Submarine into Channel' Days Before England Plays Russia at Euro
2016", The Mirror, Wednesday, 8 June

"Vladimir Putin's 'Attack' Submarine Pictured Being Escorted from Channel Days Before Russia
Play England at Euro 2016", The Mirror, Thursday, 9 June

"Putin's Sailors Stand on the Bridge of their Attack Submarine and Wave at Britain as they are
Escorted Through the English Channel by a Royal Navy Frigate", The Daily Mail, Thursday, 9 June

"Royal Navy Frigate Intercepts Russian Submarine in North Sea Near English Channel", The
Telegraph, Wednesday, 8 June

"British navy intercepts Russian submarine on way to Channel", The Guardian, 8 June

Since the incident happened in the English Channel, it's not surprising that the story was well covered in
the UK. The first article on the list, from The Sun on 7 June, is the article that broke the "exclusive"
story4. We'll also focus on this one since it was the original.

The next two stories are from sources that are read by very few people. One is a press release from the
British Navy, and the next is an article from an online naval industry news source called
NavalToday.com:

"HMS Kent shadows Russian submarine in North Sea", British Royal Navy, 8 June

"Russian Navy submarine escorted off UK’s coast", NavalToday.com

Finally, we have three articles from the (new) capital of evil, Russia:

3
The papers in the UK can be grouped into two categories - the tabloids and the "Quality Press" (or broadsheets).
The "Quality Press" targets the educated reader (similar to the New York Times), and the tabloids target the
masses. The first four sources (The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail) are from British tabloids, and the last two
(The Telegraph and The Guardian) are from the "Quality Press". One would expect stories in the "Quality Press" to
not contain as much propaganda, but we will see that this is not true. (This is definitely not true of the New York
Times, which is the pinnacle of propaganda in the US).
4
The same paper, The Sun, had a follow-up story the following day. That story was basically a joke. The paper sent
a guy into the Channel on a motorboat dressed as Lord Admiral so he could shake his fist at the Russian sub. It's
complete nonsense, so I ignored it.

2
 "UK Media Hail Navy's 'Intercept' of Russian Sub… Which Was Not Hiding", RT, 8 June

"UK 'Vociferous' Over Russian Sub Routine Passage in North Sea - Embassy", Sputnik, 8 June

"Russian MoD Surprised UK Needed NATO to Find Russian Submarine", Sputnik, 8 June

That's all the articles we'll be looking at. Let's begin!

Interception!

As I said above, most Americans learned about the Stary Oskol incident by reading the BI article of 8
June. Let's start by looking at the title of that article:

The British Navy Intercepted a Russian Submarine on its Way to the English Channel

This is from the first line of that article:

The Royal Navy's HMS Kent intercepted the Stary Oskol... The Guardian reports.

The Guardian article which the BI article linked to has this title:

British Navy Intercepts Russian Submarine on Way to Channel

Here is the first line from that Guardian article:

The Royal Navy has intercepted a Russian submarine as it cruised towards the Channel.

The narrative is quite clear: the Russian submarine was "intercepted". The repeated use of this term is
intentional - it is used to make it sound like the Russian sub was doing something wrong. The word has a
specific legal meaning5, and is usually used when a government vessel boards and inspects ships that
they suspect are doing something illegal, like shipping illegal drugs or weapons, engaging in human
trafficking, etc. For this reason, people assume that when a boat or plane is "intercepted", it is doing
something illegal (or threatening in the case of warships or planes).

Here's an example of a headline of a typical story about an "interception":

Commandos Sent to Intercept Suspected Drug-Smuggling Ship off NSW Coast

5
"Interdiction" and "interception" are usually used interchangeably in academic sources. Here is a quote
describing what the terms mean: "Guilfoyle uses the term 'interdiction' in its plain and common meaning to
describe a two-step process: 'first, the boarding, inspection and search of a ship at sea suspected of prohibited
conduct: second, where such suspicions prove justified, taking measures including any combination of arresting
the vessel, arresting persons aboard or seizing the cargo'...These activities by government vessels and warships are
also referred to as maritime interception operations and may involve tactical vessel visit, board, search, and
seizure. The terminology and the book cover the spectrum of maritime constabulary functions used to disrupt the
trafficking of illegal drugs, the trafficking of illegal migrants, and the trafficking in weapons of mass destruction, as
well as other illicit maritime activities." Kraska, James, Review of: Shipping Interdiction and the Law of the Sea, by
Douglas Guilfoyle, in the American Journal of International Law (July, 2011)

3
Using the word "interception", especially in the titles and the first sentences of the stories cited above,
gives the impression that the Russians were doing something wrong.

Motive

The question we want to address, then, is this:

Why was the Russian submarine in the English Channel?

If we know why the sub was there, we can then decide for ourselves if they are there for a legitimate
reason, or if they were doing something evil.

The BI article from 8 June addresses this question by saying that this incident is "just one in a long line of
Russian military planes and ships encroaching on UK and NATO territory". They then quote an Admiral in
the US Navy, who says that "Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses,
confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battle space to give them
an edge in any future conflict."

For Americans who read the BI stories, the answer to the above question is: "The Russians are
challenging NATO and testing their defenses". Luckily, NATO was prepared, and they "intercepted"
them.

Tugboat

Let's look at a couple quotes from the BI articles that might begin to call this theory into question.

In the second article from BI, published the day after their first one, they showed a picture of a UK Navy
vessel "intercepting" the Russian sub. In that article, BI says that "Russian state-run media claimed that
the friendly submarine was being towed by a tugboat, even waving at passing merchant ships." I was
surprised that the BI article actually mentioned a Russian response to the accusations, but they did so
only in order to discredit the Russian "claim". In the very next sentence, the BI article says this:

However, the photo released by the Royal Navy doesn't show a tugboat.

Here is the picture they are referring to:

4
There is no tugboat in the picture (which was supplied to the media by the Royal Navy), and according to
BI, this shows that Russia's "state-run" media is lying. The Russians claimed that the "friendly"
submarine was travelling with a tugboat, but there is no tugboat in the picture. Americans read this,
and wonder how the pathetic Russians can believe what they read in their "state-run" media.

The picture published by BI, however, was only one of the pictures that was published by the UK
Ministry of Defense. Here is another one that was published by The Mirror. I have labeled the three
vessels seen in the photo:

5
See the tugboat? This is a quote from The Mirror article verifying that the other boat is the tug:

MOD pictures last night showed the sub sailing above the surface while a Russian support tug is
also visible.

The Daily Mail story has a better picture of the tugboat:

6
 This is the tugboat that the BI article insinuated was not there.
As you can see, it was there, just like Russia's "state run" media said.

Americans think that Russia's "state-run" media was lying when they claimed a tugboat was present.
The Russian media was not lying. The article that the Americans read was lying. The Russians are not
pathetic for believing what's in their media, Americans are.

Waving

One more comment about that BI sentence:

Russian state-run media claimed that the friendly submarine was being towed by a tugboat,
even waving at passing merchant ships.

In addition to the BI article explicitly denying that a tugboat was present, they seem to doubt that the
Russians were waving at merchant ships, mocking the idea using the term "friendly submarine".

In the Daily Mail article from the UK, they talked to a person named Nigel Scutt, a private citizen who
went out on his boat to check out the sub up close. This is what he said happened:

7
 "We waved at them and they waved back. Then we gave a salute and they also saluted at us. It
was the closest I have ever been to one. We stayed for about 20 or 30 minutes then left."

Yes, it was a friendly Russian submarine, complete with sailors waving and saluting to people.

Here's a picture of the Russian's from the Daily Mail:

Scary!

Let's return to our question:

Why was the Russian submarine in the English Channel?

The BI article says that the Russian sub was there "prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses,
confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battle space to give them
an edge in any future conflict."

Really? Just how are they "testing our defenses" by sailing a submarine through the English Channel, on
the surface, accompanied by a tugboat?

Does that make sense to you?

Top or bottom?

8
The BI article says that Russia is testing our defenses by sending their subs into NATO waters. As you
may already know, submarines have the ability to travel either on the surface, or below it. If you want to
test the defenses of a rival nation with your submarines, it is far better to have them travel below the
surface. They are much harder to spot when they are under water. Still with me?

This question, then, is an important one in relation to our original one about why the Oskol was in the
Channel:

Was the Stary Oskol travelling on the surface, below it, or a combination of the two?

Here is what the BI article (from 9 June) says about this:

On Sunday the Royal Navy's HMS Kent frigate ship intercepted a Russian Kilo-class submarine,
after it surfaced in the North Sea off the eastern coast of England.

My understanding of this sentence is that the UK Navy was tracking the sub while it was underwater ,
and then "intercepted" it after it surfaced.

This sentence, however, is from the same BI article that claimed this tugboat was not there:

Forgive me if I am skeptical about what this article says.

If the BI article is telling the truth about the sub being submerged before it was "intercepted", we will
surely find this mentioned in the other articles I cited above. Let's look, shall we?

We'll begin by looking at what the UK Navy had to say:

On Sunday the frigate HMS Kent located the Kilo class submarine Stary Oskol in the North Sea,
and shadowed it as it sailed south past the eastern coast of the UK. The boat is moving south
towards the Dover Straits, sailing on the surface...

The Navy said that they "located" the sub, and then shadowed it. The only comment they made about
its vertical location was that it was "sailing on the surface". If the sub was submerged before they
"intercepted" it, wouldn't they have said so?

9
Since we are discussing the article from the UK Navy, let's try and pinpoint where the "interception"
occurred.

The article says that the "interception happened on Sunday, the 5th of June"6. This is 3 days before the
sub reached the English Channel. Even if the Stary Oskol was only travelling 7 knots, since it was on the
surface for at least 3 days before it reached the Channel, that means it was on the surface at least 570
miles before it reached the Channel.

The HMS Kent was in Scapa Flow before the "interception"7, which is near the interception point, so it all
seems to fit:

6
The Naval Today article confirms that the UK Navy was in contact with the sub from the 5th: " Two months after a
Russian naval group was escorted through the English Channel, a Royal Navy warship is following a Russian
submarine in the same region since June 5."
7
The HMS Kent was commemorating the Battle of Jutland centenary at Scapa Flow. See:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3617378/Letters-Royal-Navy-sailor-19-reveals-survived-Battle-Jutland-
smearing-oil-stay-warm-battleship-sank.html

10
The BI article, then, says that the submarine was travelling submerged until it reached the red circle, at
which point it surfaced, and was then intercepted by the UK Navy.

I have a few questions I have about this theory.

1) Why would the sub travel 1,300 + miles submerged while in the Norwegian Sea, far from any
populated landmass, then decide to surface only once it got close to England? That's not really being
sneaky/evil, is it? I would expect the opposite of a sneaky/evil sub: to travel on the surface while it is in
the Arctic Circle where nobody would see it anyway, then submerge once it got close to England.

2) What about the tugboat? Why would the submarine travel 1,300 + miles submerged, with a tugboat
following it on the surface? (I assume Russian tugboats must stay on the surface). Wouldn't a Russian
military tugboat on the surface, by itself (not travelling with a boat that might need a tugboat!), arouse
suspicion?

3) If the sub was submerged before it reached the "interception" point, why wouldn't the Royal Navy say
so?

Do you know what the simplest explanation for all this is?

The submarine was never submerged.

That's why the Royal Navy said nothing about it being submerged. They want to retain the small amount
of dignity they have left. The tugboat was travelling with the submarine while the sub was on the
surface. It makes little sense to have a tugboat accompany a submerged submarine.

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So far, I have only brought up what the British Navy said. What about the other articles I cited? What did
they say?

Newsweek cited the British Navy saying the sub was "sailing on the surface...". The Sun said that the sub
was "sailing on the surface". The Mirror, in a strange statement, said the sub was sailing "above the
surface". Did they think it was flying? Probably not. I think they meant on the surface.

The only media report anywhere in the world that suggested the sub was submerged was the BI article,
which, coincidentally, was read by millions of Americans.

Summary so far

In reality, the sub was sailing on the surface, accompanied by a tugboat, and the Russians were waving
and saluting to people during the trip.

Americans think that the sub travelled all the way to the English Channel submerged, then surfaced.
Americans also think that the tugboat was not there, and when the Russians said that the sub was
accompanied by a tugboat, they were lying. Also, Russians cannot be friendly, they are evil.

Official statements

Now that we know the sub was travelling on the surface, let's read what the UK and Russian
government officials said about the incident.

Daniel Thomas, the commanding officer of the HMS Kent, the UK Navy vessel that "intercepted" the
Russian sub, said that “Locating this submarine was a combined effort with NATO allies...". Michael
Fallon, the Defense Secretary for the UK, said that the "interception" of the Russian sub "shows that the
Navy is maintaining a vigilant watch in international and territorial waters to keep Britain safe and
protect us from potential threats".

It's so thrilling! Just like in Hollywood! All the NATO allies, working together, keeping a "vigilant" watch
on the seas with all their high-tech electronic do-dads, locating, tracking, and intercepting the evil
Russian sub. Fantastic!

The Russian Ministry of Defense responded with this: “An up-top sub can’t be missed", adding that "the
submarine has been making surface cruising accompanied by the Altay tug vessel". Finally: "It is not
within reason to expect the Royal Navy, together with NATO allies, not to be capable of spotting a
submarine, moreover that merchant ships of various countries steering on opposite and parallel courses
had been greeting, in accordance with old naval tradition, our sailors in the Barents, Norway and
Northern seas for several days of the passage".

Who is piling on the propaganda here, the UK or the Russians?

We will return to this issue later.

We're on Our Way!

12
Let's return to our question:

Why was the Russian submarine in the English Channel?

The BI article says that the Russian sub was in the Channel to test NATO's defenses. This is a lie. You are
not testing NATO's defences by sending a sub on the surface along with a tugboat. That's not really a
test. To understand the real reason why the sub was in the Channel, we need to know where the sub
came from, and where it was headed to. Not surprisingly, neither of the BI articles says anything about
this.

The Sun, who broke the story, said nothing about where the sub came from, but said this about the
destination:

Royal Navy sources refused to say where the sub was headed – but based on previous journeys
it is expected to be sailing for the Black Sea.

The UK Navy seems to want to keep the destination of the sub a secret for some reason, but the Sun
said that it might be headed for the Black Sea. This information was "based on previous journeys", but
they don't say what previous journeys they are talking about, or what connection there might be with
those journeys and that of the Stary Oskol.

This is from the Mirror:

Sources told the newspaper the diesel-powered sub had been tracked since leaving its home
port of Severomorsk on Sunday. It is unclear where the vessel was heading to but its previous
journeys allegedly suggested it could be travelling to the Black Sea.

They say the sub left from Severomorsk, and it was "allegedly" headed to the Black Sea. Severomorsk is
the home of the Russian Northern Fleet. By using the word "allegedly", it sounds as though the Mirror
doesn't believe that the sub is really going to the Black Sea. Who is it that told them the sub is going to
the Black Sea, and why don't they believe it? I assume it is the Russians that made the claim, and that is
why they don't believe it. (If the UK Navy told the Mirror it was going to the Black Sea, they would
believe it).

Like the Sun, the Mirror also brings up "previous journeys", but they also do not say what that means.

This is from the Daily Mail:

It is believed the submarine has been tracked by the HMS Kent since Sunday after it left its
home port in Severmorsk, in Murmansk Oblast, Russia, and travelled down Britain's eastern
coast.

It is thought the submarine, which first set sail last year and is powered with a diesel-electric
engine, is heading for the Black Sea to join the rest of Russia's fleet.

13
The same as what the Sun said, except they don't seem quite as skeptical about the idea that the sub is
headed to the Black Sea. The Sun also has a map (Murmansk is the same location as Severmorsk - home
of the Russian Northern Fleet):

Finally, Newsweek said this:

The [British] navy did not speculate what the purpose of the vessel was...The submarine took
part in Russian military exercises off the country’s northern coast at the beginning of the month
according to Russian news agency Interfax and was due to rejoin its regular deployment place in
the Black Sea.

Newsweek says the same as the Sun and the Mirror, but they reveal where this information came from.
It did not come from an insider at NATO, but from a Russian newspaper article. The Newsweek article
even linked to the Russian-language article. Click on it and hit the "translate" button. The first sentence
says that the submarine "has completed military tests in the Northern Fleet and left for the inter-fleet
transition to its permanent base in the Black Sea fleet."

The best part of this Interfax article is the publication date. It was published on 1 June. The Sun story
that broke the news of the NATO ships "intercepting" the Russian sub came out on 7 June.

Think about what this means. I'll give you a second.

14
(I'm giving you a second to figure it out).

In case you didn't get it yet, let me make it more clear:

15
Got it now?

On 1 June, the Russian media told the world that their sub had just left Murmansk and was on its way to
the Black Sea, which means in several days it would be passing through the English Channel. The sub
was sailing on the surface along with a tugboat, and it was headed for the Black Sea. Six days later, the
incredible NATO military machine "intercepts" the Russian sub at the red "X" in the above map.

Do you see how ridiculous this whole thing is yet? (The funny thing is that to understand how ridiculous
it really is, all you had to do was click on a link and read, with comprehension. The number of Americans
who do this is close to zero.)

Any person in the UK with a boat could have "intercepted" this evil, sneaky Russian sub, and they would
not have to be a part of NATO to do it.

Here are the steps to "intercepting" a Russian submarine:

1. Read the Russian media and wait until they tell you that their sub is headed towards the UK, on the
surface, along with a tugboat.

3. Wait 4 or 5 days to give it some time for the sub to travel most of the way to the UK, better to wait for
it to come to you than to head north. It's too cold up there.

4. Go out on your boat and monitor the radio, listening for chatter from shipping boats talking about
passing a Russian submarine, discussing how awesome it is, and how the Russians are waving to people.
These discussions, along with your radar, will tell you exactly where the sub is.

5. Proceed to "intercept" it and wave hello. The Russian sailors will wave back and take pictures of you.

NATO did this, and the media describes them as brave heroes defending the free world from the evil
Russians .

It's fucking surreal.

As an FYI, here is a map showing major Russian ports (marked with X's). Any time a Russian warship is at
one of these ports and wants to go to the Mediterranean, or the Atlantic, or the Black Sea, or to just
about anywhere, they will pass through the English Channel.

This happens all the fucking time.

16
 .

When a warship of one country is passing by the coast of another country, the host country will send a
Navy vessel to escort the passing ship through their waters.

For example, when the Stary Oskol passed by the Netherlands, the Dutch Navy escorted the sub. Were
there endless articles about how the Dutch Navy was saving the world from the evil Russian sub? No.
The only thing I found was a tweet:

17
See how they use the word "escort", and not "intercepted"?

Background

As we just discussed, the Russian media told the world through their media on 1 June 2016 that the
Stary Oskol had left the Northern Fleet and was headed for the Black Sea. Anyone who read this knew
that the sub would be passing through the English Channel days later. This, however, was not the first
time that the Russian media had discussed the Stary Oskol, or any of its sister subs.

As it turns out, the Russians, through their "state-run" media, discuss quite often what their armed
forces are doing. This is from an article written in 20118:

St. Petersburg-based Admiralty Shipyards laid down new submarine B-237 Rostov-on-Don of
project 636.3 Varshavyanka. This submarine will be supplied to the Black Sea Fleet. In total
Admiralty Shipyards will build six submarines of project 636.3 under the contract with the
Defense Ministry of September 5 of 2011. These submarines should be built by 2016 and they

8
"Admiralty Shipyards Laid Down a Diesel Electric Submarine for the Black Sea Fleet", Defense and Security
(Russia), 23 Nov 2011, source: Lenta.Ru (21 Nov 2011)

18
 will be included into the Black Sea Fleet too. Admiralty Shipyards are also building the first
submarine B-261 Novorossiysk of modernized project 636. This submarine should be handed
over to the customer in 2013. Two other such submarines should be built until the end of 2014.

The Stary Oskol is one of six identical submarines that Russia built at Admiralty Shipyards in St.
Petersburg. All 6 of these subs were built for the Black Sea fleet. Russia media had been talking about
this continually for over 5 years. The British Navy, and everyone else who reads the Russian media,
knows that these subs are going to the Black Sea. It is not a secret, and it never was.

Here are the names of the six subs, in the order that they were built9:

1) Novorossiysk

2) Rostov-on-Don

3) Stary Oskol

4) Krasnodar

5) Veliky Novgorod

6) Kolpino

For the past 5+ years, Russia has continually announced everything in connection with these submarines
either before it happened or as it was happening. For events that are going to happen in the near future,
they give details. For longer term events, general descriptions are given.

Let's looks at some news reports from the Russian media in connection with the first submarine, the
Novorossiysk, to see how transparent all of this is. We'll learn some things along the way.

Novorossiysk
We'll look at the history of the Novorossiysk in a chronological manner.

28 Nov 2013: Novorossiysk launched

On 20 Nov 2013, Interfax reported10 this:

On 28 November, Admiralteyskiye Verfi shipyard will launch a project 636 diesel-electric

submarine, Interfax-AVN military news agency reported on 20 November quoting the Joint Ship-
Building Corporation's vice-president for the state defence order and military-technical
cooperation, Igor Ponomarev.

9
There are countless references for this, but Wikipedia is good enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo-
class_submarine
10
"Russia to Launch Diesel-Electric Sub on 28 November", BBC Monitoring former Soviet Union, 20 Nov 2013,
source: Interfax-AVN, 12:08 gmt 20 Nov 2013

19
 The Novorossiysk is the first of the six project 636 submarines to be built for the Black Sea Fleet.
It will be based at Novorossiysk. The Navy is expected to receive it in July 2014...

The Russian media announced over a week ahead of time11 when the sub would be launched, and said
the Navy should receive it in July of the following year. This story also says, as dozens of other stories did
constantly for over 5 years, that this sub, along with the other 5, will be stationed in the Black Sea. (The
city of Novorossiysk is on the Black Sea. The first sub in this series was named after the city in which it
would be stationed. It is obviously not a secret as to where these subs were headed when they name
the first sub after its destination).

On 28 November, the boat was launched, just like the Interfax report said it would:

Russia has launched its new state-of-the-art Novorossiysk submarine, which set sail from a St
Petersburg shipyard to become the first of six diesel-electric stealth subs delivered to the
Russian Black Sea fleet in the next two years....
The Novorossiysk will be deployed in its namesake port of Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea.

Once again: "...delivered to the Russian Black Sea fleet...".

A video of the launch appeared on Youtube as well.

Between launch date and commission date

After the shipyard launches the boat, but before they give it to the Navy (the commission date), various
procedures are run. Things such as mooring trials, training of the crew, running tests, etc. All these
things were also reported by the Russian "state-run" media12.

22 Aug 2014: Shipyard hands over the Novorossiysk to the Navy (commission date)

After finishing their tests, the shipyard handed the sub over to the Navy (which is the "commission"
date) on 22 Aug 201413 in St. Petersburg. This was reported in the Russian media the day before the

11
They actually announced the launch on 23 August, but at that time said it would be launched in October: " Diesel
electric submarine Novorossiysk of project 636 that is being built for the Black Sea Fleet at Admiralty Shipyards will
be launched in October," Diesel Electric Submarine Novorossiysk Will be Launched in October", Defense and
Security (Russia), 23 August 2013
12
"On February 1 the Novorossiysk, the first diesel-electric submarine in the series that was previously built at the
Admiralteyskiye Verfi Open Joint-Stock Company, will begin mooring trials, the agency's interlocutor reported".
"Russian Project 636 Submarine Krasnodar to be Launched in February", BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, 6
Feb 2014, source: Interfax-AVN (in Russian) 29 Jan 2014. "The training of the crew has begun for the lead diesel-
electric Project 636.3 submarine, the Novorossiysk, Russia's Navy Commander in Chief Viktor Chirkov informed
journalists on Thursday...". "Russia: Crew for New Black Sea Fleet Submarine Being Trained", BBC Monitoring
Former Soviet Union, 6 Feb 2014, source: Interfax-AVN (in Russian) 20 Feb 2014. "Lead diesel electric submarine
Novorossiysk (project 636.3 Varshavyanka) being completed at Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg went out to
the Baltic Sea for running tests today". "The First Diesel Electric Submarine for the Black Sea Fleet Novorossiysk
Went to Running Tests", BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, 6 Feb 2014, source: ARMS-TASS, May 30, 2014
13
This was slightly delayed from the July 2014 date predicted in the article from 20 Nov 2013 quoted above.

20
event, and also the day of the event. Once again, they are very open about every step that is being
taken.

17 Sept 2014

At this point, the sub is still in St Petersburg, and Interfax details what the Novorossiysk will be doing in
the near future14:

The Novorossiysk is at Admiralteyskiye Verfi plant in St Petersburg where it is being prepared for
sailing. Manoeuvres in the north will comprise the last stage of "state trials" during which the
Novorossiysk will fire Kalibr missiles. She will then set sail for base, the city of Novorossiysk.

"Manoeuveres in the north" means with the Northern Fleet.15

The location of the Northern Fleet is also not a secret. This is from the Wikipedia page about the
Northern Fleet, which shows locations for everything:

This is the same area shown on a larger map:

14
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, "Russian Black Sea Fleet Gets New Sub", 17 September 2014, source:
Interfax
15
In case you are wondering if my interpretation is correct, you can check this article, which is more specific.
"переходу на Северный флот" means "transition to the Northern Fleet".

21
On 17 September 2014, Russia announced that this is where the sub will be going next for its final set of
tests.

A month after this article, the Novorossiysk got caught in a major propaganda campaign, which will be
detailed here in green. It is not necessary to read this now - you can pick up the story again in black
afterwards. But read it now. It's fun.

17 October 2014: Novorossiysk caught in propaganda campaign

In mid-October 2014, Sweden decided that there was a Russian submarine luring in the waters near
Stockholm, and their military launched an extensive search to find it. It is very likely that you remember
this incident. It was on the news non-stop for nearly a week.

In an article in The Telegraph, the Novorossiysk is cited as being a possible candidate for the mystery
Russian sub:

One analyst, author of the Russian Naval Blog, said on Twitter: "Type 636 SSK Novorossiysk was
supposed to go to Northern Fleet for two weeks of dive trials in Sep ... Did she get lost?"

For The Telegraph, an anonymous person on Twitter16 qualifies as an "analyst".

The search lasted a week and cost 3 million dollars, and they found nothing. Nevertheless, the Swedish
military was absolutely convinced that a Russian sub had violated their territory.

16
The "analyst", @RussianNavyBlog, has since left Twitter

22
Lets' talk about this incident.

First, we'll talk about what happened during the week that the Swedish armed forces conducted their
search. This part of the story was covered by the media around the world constantly, and due to this
nonstop coverage, most people likely still remember this incident to this day. After the search was over,
many developments related to the story continued to occur. These events were covered mainly only in
the Swedish media, but we'll discuss them as well.

The evidence

There were many different stories that appeared in the media during the course of Sweden's submarine
hunt. Let's look at each of these stories in the order they appeared.

How it began: A "credible source" reports.....something, on Friday, 17 October 2014

The story broke on Friday, 17 October 2014, when commander Jonas Wikström of the Swedish Navy
held a press conference where he announced that over 200 military personnel were sent to investigate
"suspicious underwater activity" in Kanholmsfjärden, a bay in the Stockholm archipelago.

What was it that prompted this action? A "credible source" reported...something. Want to know more?
Sorry, that's none of your business. The only thing that the public was allowed to know is that a
"credible source" started the sub hunt.

Here are some quotes from Wikström's press conference from Sveriges Radio where he discusses how
the sub hunt started17:

"A credible source" says [Wikström]...

Wikström: "...we built this on a credible source..."

[Wikström]: "I do not want to go into exactly what information we have, we have a credible
source"

"I will not go into what kind of source we have," says Wikström.

But wait! We get more details in the Q&A after the press conference:

Question: Is there a single source?

Wikström: "I will not go into the exact details of the source"

He wouldn't go into the "exact" details in the Q&A following the press conference, because he had
already revealed so much in his prepared comments.

Maybe Wikström is just shy. Let's see if we can find out more from Jesper Tengroth, Sweden's Armed
Forces spokesman, about how the sub hunt started:

17
Sveriges Radio is Sweden's public radio source. The quotes are translated by Google.

23
 "...Tengroth wouldn't say whether a submarine had been sighted or give any other details."

They won't even say if it was a submarine sighting that started the sub hunt! Maybe someone saw a
mink and Sweden's military thought it might be a submarine.

This is all, of course, bullshit. The reason Wikström said nothing about this "credible source" is because it
did not exist. This entire submarine hunt was a propaganda campaign, and they started their nonsense
campaign with a phantom submarine sighting that the military refused to give even the slightest details
about. They wouldn't say a word about the individual involved in the initial sighting, and they wouldn't
even say if what they saw was a submarine!

That's none of your business!

This propaganda campaign had three major objectives:

1. Demonize Russia.

2. Increase Sweden's military budget.

3. Help to convince Sweden to join NATO.

It was an orchestrated event, planned in advance. A planned propaganda campaign cannot be prompted
by a real event - they can't just wait around until someone happens to see a submarine that isn't there -
so they make up a sighting.

What other explanation is there why nothing can be said about this sighting? Normally, when a
government wants to deflect attention away from an obvious lie, they simply say that the information is
"top secret", and that they can't tell you anything because you're a stupid civilian and wouldn't
understand, or that telling you would reveal their "top secret" intelligence gathering methods. This
"credible source", however, was a sighting from a private individual, not some undercover member of
Sweden's special forces using technology unknown to the public. They don't have to say who this person
was, but why the hell couldn't they say what the person saw? Nearly everyone on the planet walks
around with a camera on them. Did this person take a picture of this supposed submarine? If there was
a photo associated with this first sighting, then what reason could there be for not showing it? Cameras
are not top secret. People know that cameras exist.

There was no photo. There was no sighting.

If you believe that the Swedish Navy started a week-long, 3 million dollar submarine hunt based on a
oral report from a private citizen, then you are an imbecile.

Sighting #2 on Friday

A second sighting happened on Friday, but it was reported too late in the day to be included in
Wikström's press conference. This sighting was not mentioned by the Swedish military until Sunday, 20
October, when another press conference was held by Anders Grenstad. That morning, a third sighting

24
had occurred, and Anders showed a map18 of the location of all three sightings. The first was the sighting
from Friday morning in Kanholmsfjärden, which is the one we already discussed that is a fabrication. The
second, in Nämdöfjärden, occurred on Friday afternoon, and the third happened on Sunday morning in
Jungfrufjärden. The main topic of conversation was sighting number three, because the person who
made that sighting took a photo, and the photo was all anyone could talk about. Because of this, the
second sighting was ignored. I searched for quite a while, and for a long time could find nothing about
the second sighting.

Finally, by accident, I ran across an article published by Expressen, a Swedish tabloid, that interviewed
the guy who made the second sighting! The article was published on Friday, the same day the sighting
was made. There was also another article published on Saturday which mentioned the individual,
revealing a few more details. After these two articles were published, the person who made the second
sighting was never mentioned again in the media, by Expressen or anyone else.

Ever.

Before discussing what was revealed by the Expressen articles about sighting two, I'd like to point out
that all three sightings mentioned by Anders in the Sunday press conference were deemed credible by
the Swedish military19, which includes sighting number two.

Here's what happened with sighting two:

The person who reported the second sighting is named Magnus Ringby. He was fishing with his friend in
the Stockholm archipelago on Friday afternoon20. When they returned, they heard the news that the
Swedish military had started a submarine hunt. Magnus called the Expressen newspaper and told them
that he had seen a submarine while he was out fishing. The newspaper immediately published an article
about Magnus' story. When the Swedish military saw the article, they called Magnus21, and he told them
the same story he told Expressen22.

The end.

This is what the Swedish military deems "credible"? Magnus comes home from a fishing trip, hears
about a submarine hunt, and decides that he saw the submarine. Does he call the military? No. The
police? No. He calls the Expressen newspaper and gets a big photo of himself in the paper.

Was that the goal?

18
Here is the map shown by Anders, and here is an alternate copy.
19
See: "De iakttagelser som Försvarsmakten bedömer som trovärdiga har skett i Kanholmsfjärden, Nämdöfjärden
och Jungfrufjärden." (The observations Armed Forces consider reliable occurred in Kanholmsfjärden,
Nämdöfjärden and Jungfrufjärden. They took place on Friday and Sunday.)
20
"Magnus Ringby och en vän hade tagit ledigt från jobbet på fredagen för att ge sig ut på en fisketur ute i
Skärgården. När båten körde på Nämdöfjärden vid 15-tiden möttes de av något oväntat vid Kalvholmen."
21
"Efter att Expressen skrev om iakttagelsen i går kväll blev Magnus Ringby uppringd av Försvarsmakten."
22
"De ställde frågor om föremålet och jag berättade samma sak som jag tidigare gjort för er, säger han."

25
Maybe you're thinking that after the Expressen reporter left his house, Magnus picked up the phone and
called the military? Or the police? Nope. Magnus was done. He already got his picture in the paper. The
only reason he ever talked to the military is because the military called Magnus that night.

And what about his friend? Didn't he see the submarine? Even if he didn't want his name or photo in the
paper, his account could still have been taken. But it seems like the friend didn't want to be part of
Magnus's story. Why not?

Let's get back to the military's evaluation of the Magnus sighting. As I mentioned above, the military
called Magnus to get his account of the submarine sighting.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The Swedish military spends 3 million dollars to send hundreds of people searching the oceans using
every vehicle that floats, but they can't send someone to talk to Magnus in person? They deemed the
Magnus account "credible" from a fucking phone call? Magnus saw the submarine from 500 meters
away, but didn't think to take a picture of it? His phone doesn't have a camera? His friend's phone also
doesn't have a camera? Did the military bother calling the friend? Does the military wonder why the
friend doesn't want to be involved?

There were over 250 submarine sightings after the submarine hunt was announced. This was one of the
three that the military deemed "credible". What makes Magnus' story credible, when hundreds of
others were not? All Magnus said was that he saw a submarine. He gave a couple details, like it had a
"large chimney", it looked like a "sauna" in the water, and that it was metal. Do the hundred other
people who said they saw a submarine not say anything about a chimney, so the military doesn't believe
them?

This is ridiculous.

Also, isn't it a little strange that Magnus is the only person in Sweden that saw the evil Russian
submarine and is willing to talk about it in the media, but other than Expressen, not a single other news
source on the planet wants to talk to him? If he is willing to talk in public, shouldn't the military be
parading their "credible" source in front of the cameras at their next press conference? I am sure the
public would want to hear about the metallic chimney on the Russian sub!

I did a search on Magnus, and may have found out why the media didn't pursue this story.

In Sweden, the law says that publishing the name of a sex offender is illegal, because it violates the sex
offender's right to have his personal information protected.23 In spite of this law, or because of it, there
are websites that publish the names of sex offenders in Sweden anyway. One of them is
Kriminellt.com24.

23
"According to the Data Inspection Board, the publishing of sex offenders' names is a crime against Sweden's laws
protecting personal information."
24
There is an article about the website here.

26
Magnus has a webpage on Kriminellt here. It seems as though he was convicted of child molestation 7
times, two of which were before his submarine sighting (the ages of the girls range from 6 to 14). On 2
August 2016, he was sentenced to a 14 month jail term for his hobby. The military could easily have
looked up the criminal history of whatever witness they are talking to, and likely did. I realize that
Magnus cold have seen a Russian submarine even though he has sex with children, but is this really the
most "credible" source the Swedish military could find?

Maybe this story is why Magnus did get much media coverage.

Summary for Day 1 (Friday, 17 October):

The sub hunt started because a member of the public supposedly saw something. Who saw it, what they
saw, and any and all other details must remain a complete secret (they cannot even say if it was a
submarine that was spotted). The reason it was a secret is because it never happened. Once the initial,
fabricated sighting was out there, people start seeing submarines everywhere25. Over 250 submarines
sightings were reported over the next week. One of these sightings was from Magnus Ringby, a
pedophile who seemed primarily interested in getting his photo in the paper. The Swedish military
deemed his sighting credible after he told them over the phone what he saw.

Saturday: The distress call

Day one was not very impressive, at least for those who are not imbeciles. The evidence at this point
consisted of two sightings. One was completely fabricated, so they could report no details of it. The
other was a sighting reported by a real person, but the details were so embarrassing that they again
could release no details.

The people running this propaganda campaign needed something that would make the story more
credible, and least to the masses. This was provided the next day, as if by magic, in an article26 by
Svenska Dagbladet (from now on, SvD) that provided a much better story for why the submarine hunt
started. The article said that on Thursday evening, the day before the first two sightings, the National
Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) (the Swedish equivalent to the NSA) detected a radio transmission
that is used by Russia in "emergency situations". The speculation was that the emergency transmission
originated from a damaged Russian sub.

Because this emergency transmission occurred before the two sightings, this became the revised reason
why the Swedish military started their sub hunt.

The same SvD article also said that on Friday night, after the two sightings, the FRA also intercepted
encrypted transmissions between Stockholm's archipelago and Kaliningrad.

The information about the "emergency" transmission Thursday night and the encrypted transmission
Friday night were both given to SvD by anonymous sources. Shocking.

25
This is because of a phenomenon call "priming". Look it up in a psychology textbook.
26
An English version of the article was published here.

27
Now that they had assembled a workable story, the propaganda blitz began in earnest with articles like
this in the New York Times. Here is the part where the it talks about the "emergency" signal:

Citing unnamed sources, a Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, said the hunt began after
the military intercepted a radio transmission on a frequency used by the Russian Navy for
emergencies and emanating from an area in the archipelago about 30 miles from Stockholm.

The New York Times says the hunt began because of the intercepted Russian distress call, and not
because of a fabricated sighting. All mainstream media outlets said the same thing: the hunt was a
response to the intercepted distress call. But if you bother to look a little closer, you find something
strange. Go to the New York Times article I cited and find the sentence I quoted above. At the text "said
the hunt began", they provide a hyperlink to the English language version of the SvD article that talks
about the emergency call. This line is in the last paragraph of that article27:

At the same press conference the Swedish armed forces rejected that they had recieved [sic]
information about any emergency call in Russian.

The person who rejected the claim about an intercepted emergency call made by the Russians was Rear
Admiral Anders Grenstad, who at the time was Deputy Chief of Operations of the Swedish Navy.28

The New York Times says that the submarine hunt started because an emergency call from the Russians
was intercepted by the Swedish military. In the sentence that makes this claim, they provide a hyperlink
to a story that quotes a Rear Admiral of the Swedish Navy denying that this emergency call ever
happened!!!

This important piece of information was mostly ignored by the Western Press. It was only reported by
the AP (which was picked up by CBS News and the Independent), Reuters, and, strangely enough, the
Daily Mail.

A week later, just as the sub hunt was ending, more news emerged about both the emergency call and
the encrypted messages to Kaliningrad. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, citing freedom of
information requests (which found no documents about the intercepted messages) and sources within
the military, published an article saying that neither of the events ever happened (this was covered in
Sweden by Sveriges Television as well). This information was not covered by any Western media outlet
(it was covered by RT and a news agency in Georgia (the country)29).

27
If you are going to find anything interesting in a mainstream news article, it will be in the last line or two.
Propagandists know that almost nobody will read an article from start to finish. In fact, most people only read
headlines. Putting a bit of truth at the end of an article pretty safe thing to do. Nobody will see it.
28
See this: "At the press conference, Rear Admiral Grenstad denied that the military had knowledge of any such
emergency signal, but he declined to comment on whether any encrypted communications had been monitored."
29
"'Russian Distress Call' Prompting Swedish Sub Hunt Never Existed - Sigint Source", GHN News Agency, 28
October 2014

28
Two weeks after it was revealed that these transmissions never happened, the Swedish military
"confirmed" that they were indeed violated by a Russian sub (we will cover that story soon). When the
New York Times reported on this "confirmation" by the Swedish military, they said the following:

At the time, the Swedish news media reported that the military had detected a distress call from
what was believed to be a Russian submarine that was possibly stranded underwater.

Two weeks after Sweden reported that the emergency call never happened, the New York Times is still
peddling the lie. As part of their article, they link to the Swedish military report that summarizes the
evidence they have for the Russian sub intrusion. The report by the Swedish military does not say a
word about either the distress call or the intercepted encrypted message the following day. The Swedish
military does not mention these things because they never happened, and they did not want to print a
blatant lie in an official military document. That didn't stop the New York Times from printing the blatant
lie, however.

Let's reread the question we are trying to answer: What evidence was there of a foreign sub in Swedish
waters that convinced the military to begin this extensive search?

Initially, we thought that the search started because of the two sightings on Friday, but then we
discovered that the "real" reason was because the Swedish military intercepted a distress call from a
Russian vessel, and also intercepted an encrypted message the following day. But later, we found out
that these intercepted messages never happened, so we are back to where we started.

The submarine hunt started with a fabricated story that involved zero details.

Saturday: The Mysterious NS Concord

The same SvD article that reported the lies about the intercepted transmissions had another storyline.
They reported about a Russian-owned oil tanker, the NS Concord, that was hanging out in the Baltic Sea
east of Stockholm. The article said that during the cold war the Soviet Union would hide mini subs in
converted fishing boats or merchant ships, the implication being that the NS Concord may have
transported a mini sub to Swedish waters and was waiting around to pick it up. The article linked to a
separate SvD article that was entirely devoted to this subject. The next day, Dagens Nyheter had an
article linking the tanker to Putin.

This storyline is just as obnoxious as the one about the about the intercepted transmissions.

First of all, it is true that the NS Concord is Russian-owned, and was outside of Stockholm at the time of
the incident. But is this really "suspicious"?

To understand why I ask that, let's first have a little geography lesson. Stockholm is about 427 miles
from St. Petersburg, which is a major Russian port, and about 323 miles from Kalingrad, a Russian
territory which borders Lithuania and Poland. Here are these three places:

29
These three places are all located on the Baltic Sea, which is the blue area in between them. Blue areas
are where you normally find oil tankers.

Now, let's mention a factoid about Sovcomflot, the company that owns the NS Concord. It is the largest
shipping company in Russia, and it has 59 oil tankers as part of its fleet.

Guess what. Considering how many tankers this company owns, and how close Stockholm is to major
Russian ports, it's a safe bet that at any one time, one of them is near Stockholm.

Let's find out if I am correct.

I am writing this on 22 March 2017 and, using the website Marine Traffic, I see that the Ligovsky
Prospect is anchored near Helsinki, which is near Stockholm (there is a dotted red square around its
location. Dots are anchored boats, arrows are boats in motion, and red dots/arrows are oil tankers):

30
Also, the NS Century is anchored off the coast of Latvia, near Kaliningrad, and also near Stockholm:

There are presently two Russian oil tankers anchored near Stockholm. If the MSM was running a fake
Russian propaganda story today about Russian subs in Sweden's waters, then the Ligovsky Prospect and
the NS Century would be in the news. They would be wondering if one of these tankers brought a mini
sub to spy on Sweden.

31
In reality, there are always oil tankers near Stockholm. Some of them will be Russian, some will not.
None of the tankers have submarines on them. They are oil tankers. They are transporting oil, not
submarines.

The NS Concord was supposedly suspicious because it was zigzagging back and forth in the Baltic Sea,
and not going anywhere. This, however, is normal. Oil tankers are not constantly in motion from one
port to another. Sometimes, when they are just outside their destination and loaded with oil, they will
hang out, waiting to get the best price on their cargo. Other times, when they are empty, they will hang
out and wait to hear from their shipping company on where and when to go pick up their next load.
Most of the time, tankers will anchor when they are hanging out, but sometimes they will just drift.

The SvD article I linked to above explains some of this. Erik Hånell, president of the Swedish tanker
company Stena Bulk, talks about how tankers will sometimes wait outside a destination for a good price.
Thomas Erlund, head of Vessel Traffic at Liikennevirasto, the Finnish Transport Agency, reiterated this,
saying that oil prices at the time were very low. He added that international waters near St. Petersburg
are very narrow, and that it makes sense that the ship would instead wait out in the Baltic where there
is more room. Erlund did say it was a "bit strange" that the boat would be zigzagging around instead of
anchoring, but it is certainly not a requirement to anchor.

Here's a tanker of the Texas coast that is drifting:

The Energy R is owned by a UK company. Nobody is accusing the UK of sending submarines into US
waters just because it decided to drift instead of anchoring.

32
The SvD article devoted to this storyline produces two experts on tanker shipping that say what the NS
Concord is doing is normal. To counter these experts, they produce Thomas Ries, an academic, who
thinks that the behavior of the NS Concord shows that it was really carrying a submarine, and not oil. His
reasoning is based on the "fact" that the NS Concord arrived in the Baltic Sea on Wednesday, and the
intercepted emergency call occurred the following day. That can't be a coincidence!

But we know that the emergency call never fucking happened. His reasoning, then, is based on a lie.

(Thomas Ries was in the news 9 months later still babbling on about the Russian sub. In July of 2015 a
diving/treasure-hunting company called Ocean X Team found a sunken Russian sub in Swedish waters.
They said that "it seems that it is a modern submarine. And it seems to be completely unscathed." Of
course, the implications in the media30 were that they may have found the infamous Russian sub we are
currently discussing. Thomas Ries was interviewed in the same article, talking about how "serious" the
incident was and making a general ass of himself. Then, the Swedish government announced that the
Russian sub sank in 1916 during WWI. Modern submarine.)

There was another expert in Sweden who voiced an opinion on this subject. Anders Nordin, the head of
Sweden's Coast Guard for the Stockholm area, told Sweden's national wire service31 that the path of the
NS Concord was "consistent with normal tanker movements"32.

Let's write that again, this time using "year's supply of fairy cakes" font, in purple:

Anders Nordin, the head of Sweden's Coast Guard for the Stockholm area, told Sweden's
national wire service that the path of the NS Concord was "consistent with normal tanker
movements" .

Do you think the Western media reported what Anders said? Not exactly.

Here's what the Daily Mail quoted about the exchange between Anders and the media:

Anders Nordin from the Swedish Maritime Administration said a Russian-owned oil tanker,
Concord, which had been circling near Swedish waters for days, started sailing toward Russia on
Sunday morning.
But, according to Marine Traffic, a website which monitors vessels in the Baltic Sea, it suddenly
turned around and headed back towards Sweden.
It has been suggested that the tankers movements could be connected to the submarine search.

Here, for a direct comparison, is how the Swedish media reported the exact same information33:

30
"The discovery comes nine months after Swedish troops and ships unsuccessfully hunted for a Russian
submarine said to have been near Stockholm, in the country’s biggest military mobilisation since the cold war."
31
TT News Agency
32
Quoted by Swedish news source "the Local". A more detailed quote can be found in the last paragraph here
(along with the actual recording).
33
I had the exchange translated from here, but the same exchange can be found everywhere in the Swedish
media.

33
 The NS Concord's original destination was Denmark, but it now has a new destination.
"The latest information is that the destination has changed to the Russian port of Primorsk", said
Anders Nordin, head of Sweden's Coast Guard for the Stockholm area.
Saturday night, after the Svenska Dagbladet wrote about it34, it headed northeast. Sunday
afternoon it was on a southerly course.
"They went back and forth just off of Gotska Sandön"35, said Nordin.
He points out that this is not unusual behavior.
"This is common, especially in the oil business. They are waiting for their next order".

The Daily Mail seems to have done a little "creative editing", don't you think?36

In the first sentence, the Daily Mail quotes Anders saying the Concord "started sailing toward Russia on
Sunday morning". Flat. Out. Lie. Anders did not say that the Concord had started sailing towards Russia.
All he said was that they changed their destination to Russia. In fact, he specifically talked about how the
Concord was still zigzagging around in the Baltic, and how that is not unusual behavior.

But it gets even better in the next sentence. Let's paraphrase the first two sentences I quoted above
from the Daily Mail:

Anders Nordin said the Concord started sailing towards Russia Sunday morning, but instead of
going continuing on to Russia, it suddenly turned around and headed back towards Sweden.

None of this is true. The Concord did NOT start sailing towards Russia. Anders did NOT say that the
Concord started sailing towards Russia. The Concord did NOT "suddenly" turn around and start heading
back towards Sweden. NONE OF THIS HAPPENED. All the Concord was doing was zigzagging back and
forth, which is what it had been doing for days.

With sentence three, they turn the up the lies to yet another level. Let's print it again:

It has been suggested that the tankers movements could be connected to the submarine search.

It has been suggested by who!! Anders, the person they were had just brought up, certainly did
not suggest that the tankers movements were connected to the submarine search. In fact, Anders said
the complete opposite by saying the Concord is behaving in a perfectly normal manner.

The Daily Mail omits what Anders says about the Concord's behavior being normal, and they replace it
with a line suggesting the opposite, and they attribute that idea to nobody.

Maybe you're thinking: "So the Daily Mail lied. They are just a British tabloid. So what."

34
The article they are referring to is this one, which I already cited previously.
35
Gotska Sandön is an island in the Baltic Sea.
36
I have searched extensively for everything Anders Nordin said during the sub hunt, including radio recordings.
The Daily Mail article and the articles that appeared in Sweden are all from the same day, and draw from the same
exchange between Anders and the media.

34
Let's take a look at a quote from an AP article37 from the same day:

Anders Nordin from the Swedish Maritime Administration said a Russian-owned oil tanker,
Concord, which had reportedly been circling near Swedish waters for days, started sailing in a
northeasterly direction toward Russia on Sunday morning.
But it suddenly turned around and headed back in the direction of Sweden, according to Marine
Traffic, a website which monitors vessels in the Baltic Sea.
Media reports said the movements of the Liberian-flagged tanker might be connected to the
submarine search.

Ring a bell? It's almost identical to the Daily Mail article I quoted above. The Daily Mail article was
written by Will Stewart, Steve Hopkins, and Gemma Mullin, who are all regular contributors to the Daily
Mail. The rest of the article is different than the AP article, but these three lines are nearly identical. The
rest of the article is obnoxious, but these three lines are outright lies.

Isn't it interesting how the outright lies are what gets copied from one source to another???? But if I
were to say that the media is one big coordinated propaganda machine, I would be a conspiracy
theorist.

Anyway, other than CBS News, which I already cited, the AP story was also picked up by Christian
Science Monitor, the Independent, the Washington Examiner, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
and FOX News. Plenty of people read these lies about the Concord.

On Monday, the day after all the nonsense stories we just talked about were published, Sovcomflot, the
company that owns the Concord, issued the following press release:

Moscow, October 20, 2014 - Tanker NS Concord owned by SCF Novoship (type - "Aframax",
deadweight – 105,902 tonnes) is presently chartered for transporting a cargo of oil from the
port of Primorsk in Russia. The ship is currently drifting on standby awaiting loading orders, at a
distance of 14 to 25 nautical miles off the territorial waters of the Kingdom of Sweden.
On 18 October the Swedish Coast Guard contacted the ship, asking about the vessel’s
movements and the purpose of her drifting. Following the ship Master’s response, the Coast
Guard thanked him for the information provided.
OAO Novoship’s President Yuri Tsvetkov said: "We have noted and are flattered by the
increased attention in the Swedish and international media to the movements of NS Concord.
However, I have to report that there is nothing unusual behind the ship’s movements as she
awaits her cargo loading operations. The practice of vessels drifting on standby is widespread in
commercial ship management. Simultaneously, in different oceans of the world, dozens of
vessels may be drifting awaiting loading orders under the terms of their charters. In the coming
days, NS Concord will move to Primorsk for the voyage for which she is chartered. The loading is
scheduled for 23 October."

37
As we will see in a moment, the AP article was picked up by several outlets, including CBS News here.

35
The Swedish Coast Guard contacted the ship on Saturday. Anders is the head of the Stockholm area of
the Swedish Coast Guard, and is very likely the person who contacted the Concord. The Captain of the
Concord told the Swedish Coast Guard that they would be headed to Primorsk on the 23rd, which is why
Anders said that the Concord would be headed for Russia. The Concord would not have started heading
for Russia on either the 18th or 19th if they were not due there for 4 or 5 days. More proof that Anders
did NOT tell anyone that the Concord had already started sailing for Primorsk on the 19th.

To be fair, there was one mainstream source that told the truth about what Anders said: the BBC (the
truth was in the last line of the article, or course).

Just for fun, let's see what the Concord has been up to recently.

According to Marine Traffic, this is its current position (on 22 March 2017):

Holy crap!! It's anchored just outside of Houston! Those damn Commies must have submarines in
Houston's Bay! How come this isn't on CNN!

The Concord has been anchored outside of Houston since the 16th of March. I watched it for a while,
and it didn't go to the Houston port until the 26th. It then left for Freeport:

36
The Concord was hanging out just outside of Houston for 10 days! I wonder how many submarines it
dumped into the ocean just off the US coast?

Let's check and see where some of the other 59 oil tankers from the same company, Sovcomflot, are
right now.

The Moscow River is also anchored just outside of Houston:

The NS Champion is anchored just outside of Corpus Christi:

37
The NS Commander is on the move near New Orleans:

And check out this one:

38
Holy crap! The Adygeya is on the Mississippi 30 miles inland from New Orleans! It's an invasion!

The NS Corona is also on the Mississippi:

The Nikolay Zuyev is anchored near New Orleans, no doubt unloading submarines:

39
The SCF Primorye is anchored outside of LA:

The NS Lotus is anchored just outside of New York City:

And finally, the SCF Samotlor, the SCF Baikal, and the NS Burgas are all anchored off the coast of
Delaware, close to Washington DC. I guess they are unloading submarines to spy on Trump:

40
On 22 March 2017, there were 9 Russian oil tankers anchored off the US coast. And this is from just one
Russian company.

It is normal for Russian oil tankers to be everywhere in the world, including near Sweden.38

Saturday: Spetsnaz!

Another storyline began on Saturday when a resident of Sandhamn took a photo of someone standing
on a strip of land just off the coast. Here is the photo that was taken39:

38
There was also another story about a Russian ship, the Pofessor Logachev, that made it into the media during
the hunt. I decided not to cover this storyline. It's even more ridiculous than the Concord story. You get the point.
39
From the original Dagens Nyheter article that broke the story.

41
Dagens Nyheter broke the story the following day, saying that MUST and Sapo (Intelligence and Security
divisions in Sweden's military) were "hunting" the man. Dagens Nyheter released another story the
same day, where they interviewed Joakim von Braun, an "expert" on Russian submarines. Von Braun
said that the submarine Sweden was hunting for may be a mini-sub called a "Triton". He speculated that
since this submarine was damaged, the Spetsnaz (Russian special forces) aboard the mini sub may have
swam ashore, where they would be waiting to be picked up, possibly by a Swedish "sleeper agent" (a
Swedish national who is a Russian spy). Before leaving the sub, the Spetsnaz would have rigged the
submarine to explode some time later, to destroy any evidence.

That's an awful amount of BS for a stupid grainy photo showing a guy standing on a little strip of land.

These rambling, ridiculous speculations by von Braun were repeated endlessly in the Swedish media,
and in the Western media as well, including the LA Times, Time magazine, the Guardian, the Telegraph,
and the Daily Mail.

Isn't it interesting how an insane, unhinged conspiracy theory becomes top news around the world?

There are no articles anywhere that consider far, far, far more likely theories, something like "maybe
it was a guy taking a walk".

We don't have to speculate any further, because the same day that the articles in the LA Times, Time
magazine, and the Guardian were published (20 October 2014), the Swedish media announced that the

42
mystery man had been caught, and his identity had been revealed! They even published his picture!
Here he is:

Spetsnaz!!
Just kidding, he's not Spetsnaz. The exciting story told by von Braun turned out to be nonsense - the
man was not a Russian Spetnaz searching for his sleeper agent.

He was a local retired Swede fishing for trout.

Hilarious.

Although the Swedish media covered this part of the story, the Western media was not as interested.
Several British news outlets such as the BBC did reveal the identity of the "man in black"40. The Guardian
had a sentence about it, and the Telegraph had two sentences about it (the last two sentences of the
article, of course).

The number of US news sources that reported the identity of the mystery man, however, was exactly
zero. Even after Ove was identified, the US media not only refused to mention it, but they continued to
bring up the story without mentioning it. For example, the day after Ove's picture was plastered all over
the Swedish media, and the same day that the Guardian and the BBC admitted that the mystery man

40
This is the same BBC article that was the only Western source that published the truth about what Anders
Nordin said about the Concord ship movements being normal. Bravo.

43
was Ove, the New York Times published an article that mentioned this storyline twice. This is what the
"paper of record" had to say:

Unsubstantiated reports soon proliferate, including one that an enigmatic man in black has been
spotted wading near the craft, a would-be spy on a secret mission .... The Swedish news media
has also reported the sighting of a mysterious man in black wading into the water near a military
base on Korso, suggesting a Russian-style James Bond sent to infiltrate from abroad.

They did say that the story was "unsubstantiated", but they declined to tell the actual truth, which is
that the man had already been identified as a retired Swedish fisherman!

LIARS!
Not only did the New York Times omit the truth, they linked to the original story from Sweden, TWICE41,
that reported about the hunt for the "mystery man". Their obvious goal was to continue to keep the
nonsense story alive by neglecting to tell the truth. They are stinking, filthy liars.

But the New York Times still wasn't done. Three days later, they published yet another story that once
again brought up the same storyline and, once again, omitted the truth. This is what they said:

Rumors of an espionage plot also surfaced after a mysterious man in black was spotted wading
near an unidentified craft.

Still no mention of Ove. They repeatedly bring up the story because it sounds incriminating, but it is
nonsense, and they know it. It's BS propaganda. This is the most distinguished news source in the US. It's
unbelievably pathetic. But if I talk to anyone in this country about the propaganda that exists here, they
look at me like I'm crazy.

They are imbeciles.

Saturday: Photo #1

On Saturday42 there was a report of a group of elderly Swedes was crossing the Djuro bridge, which
connects Djuro island with Fagelbrolandet island, when one of them saw a submarine and took this
picture of it (only the elderly in Sweden have saved up enough money to buy a camera, but, judging
from the quality of the image below, not a very good one):

41
At the text "enigmatic man in black" and "reported".
42
"Några alerta medborgare rapporterade i lördags..."

44
Here is where the bridge is:

Here is a closer view of where the bridge is:

45
And yet a closer view:

The bridge is adjacent to a resort called Djuronaset.

Here is a Swedish tourism website highlighting things to do in the Stockholm archipelago. On this page
they have a fun thing to do: submarine rides! Here are some pics from that page:

46
The sub is a retired sub from Sweden's Navy. The Djuronaset hotel now owns the ex Navy sub, and they
use it to give rides to tourists.

Let's put the picture that the elderly Swedes took next to the one above:

47
Guess what. The elderly Swedes took a picture of the tourist sub at the Djuronaset hotel, which was
discussed in the Swedish43 media, and in an article from the BBC.

It's been a while, but maybe you remember that I told you the first sighting, the one that started the
whole submarine hunt, happened in Kanholmsfjärden. Let's see where this is relative to the Djuronaset
resort:

As I'll explain in a moment, the Swedish Navy initially showed a map of the first three sightings, but later
said that they lied about the exact locations. Afterwards, they told the truth about where the sightings
occurred. Here is a map of the (actual) first sighting in relation to the tourist sub:

43
This article is behind a paywall, but the text can be found here.

48
The "credible source" that reported the event(?)44 that started the entire submarine hunt happened in
the red circle in Kanholmsfjärden of Friday, 17 October. The next day, some elderly Swede's took a
picture of a submarine from a bridge at the outlet to Kanholmsfjärden. This submarine is a tourist
attraction whose home base is in the blue circle.

The "event" that started this submarine hunt happened just up the coast from the tourist sub.

Earlier, I said that the initial event was fabricated. If I was wrong, and it was a real "event", was it
another person who saw the tourist sub? Was this the excuse needed to start their propaganda
campaign?

When the newspaper asked the tourist sub commander if his tours will continue during the next few
days45 (i.e., during the sub hunt), he replied, “Yes, we expect to. But we’ll stay within the area for the
sake of security.”

Sure, why not let the tourist submarine sail around during a fictitious submarine hunt! It will increase
the sightings of a "Russian" sub! How many of the 250 sighting were of this sub?

Summary for Day 2 (Saturday, 18 October):

More bullshit. More lies. Sweden's SvD newspaper fabricated a story about a Russian distress call and an
intercepted encrypted message that was meant to give the sub hunt some credibility. The story was
shown a week later to be BS by the Swedish media, but that went unreported in the US. There was also
a BS story about an oil tanker, which was doing exactly what oil tankers do, and another BS story about a
Russian Spetznaz dressed in black on the shore looking for his Swedish agent. He turned out to be a

44
I don't know what to call it, since Sweden's military won't even say if the event was a submarine sighting, so I'll
leave it as "event".
45
Text: "Kommer ni att fortsätta att göra era turer under de närmaste dagarna?"

49
retired Swede fishing for trout. There was also a story about some elderly Swedes taking a picture of a
tourist sub.

Sunday: The second photo!

On Sunday, 19 October, Anders Grenstad, an Admiral in the Swedish Navy, gave another press
conference, where he showed a map46 of three sightings that had been made (the sighting made by the
elderly Swedes from the bridge is not included - the Swedish military preferred not to draw attention to
the fact that a tourist sub is part of this story). The first two were the sightings on Friday that we already
discussed47. The third sighting was made on Sunday morning, and was revealed at the press conference
for the first time. Unlike the first two sightings, this person48 took a photo of the submarine!

Someone in Sweden has a camera!

Here is the photo as it appeared on the New York Times website:

As we have already discussed, the New York Times are stinking liars, and this photo is no exception. This
photo has been enhanced.

Here is a picture of the non-photoshopped image from NPR:

46
An equivalent, cartoon map can be found here.
47
The initial "event" and the pedophile sighting.
48
Here is an interview with the person who took the photo.

50
Open up the two images in separate tabs in your browser. You will clearly see the difference. The
unretouched photo (which was also shown by NBC News, Reuters, and the Financial Times, ) shows a
blurry blob. I'll enlarge the inset from the above photo so you can get a good look at this Russian
submarine:

51
There were 250 sightings of the Russian sub made by private citizens during the week of the submarine
hunt. Out of these 250 sightings, this is the only photograph that was taken. This is Sweden's best
evidence that the Russian sub really existed.

They are insane.

People had a good time with this nonsense. Here is one Swedish bloggers interpretation of what the
photo showed:

And this one was popular:

52
What is really funny is how proud the media were of this image. They showed it everywhere, constantly.
Remember how I said that the details of original sighting that started this whole submarine hunt were
never released? That means that the details of the original sighting was far less convincing than this
image!

The Swedish military conducted a week long search, costing 3 million dollars, of a phantom submarine,
on the basis of something that was even less convincing that the blurry blob you see above. My initial
reaction is to call them stupid, but they are not stupid. They know there was no submarine. The whole
thing was a propaganda campaign, and they knew it.

Here's a question: Why would a Russian submarine be in Sweden's waters be travelling on the
surface???? The media explanation49 is that the a submarine in distress might need to surface (referring
to the intercepted distress calls). The problems with this explanation, however, is that there was no
fucking distress call!!50 Why, then, would a functioning sub that is trying to hide come to the surface?

It wouldn't.

There was no sub on the surface.

There was no sub, period.

Monday

Nothing new happened Monday, other than the news that the "suspicious" man in black was Ove, a
retired Swede doing some fishing (which we already covered). Slow day.

Tuesday

They didn't want two slow days in a row, so on Tuesday they announced that there were two more
sightings from members of the public. The military spokesman was asked if there were any pictures
taken, and the answer was, of course, no. There are very few cameras, or phones with cameras, in
Sweden. Sweden is a very poor and destitute third world nation. No details of these two sightings were
ever released.

Wednesday

Nothing. Sub-mania, however, did spread to Norway.

Thursday

Nothing

Friday

49
See: "An underwater craft in distress can be difficult to manoeuvre, which might explain why it was spotted
above the waterline, the newspaper said." See similar remarks here.
50
This was discussed above.

53
There were reports on Friday that a Russian submarine, travelling on the surface and accompanied by a
tugboat, passed through an international waterway (the Oresund strait) outside of Copenhagen. This is
200 miles away from where the submarine hunt was occurring:

So what.

This non-story, coming after two consecutive days of no stories, was getting too pathetic, even for the
propagandists, so they decided to end the submarine hunt.

Bonus sighting

During the submarine hunt, there were five submarine sightings by the public that the Swedish military
deemed credible. We discussed them all. There was actually one more sighting that occurred a week
after the submarine hunt had ended. This sighting happened on 31 October 2014, but it was not
reported until January 2015. Let's talk about this now since we are on the subject of sightings made by
the public.

On 11 January 2015, Dagens Nyheter published two articles about a submarine hunt that occurred on 31
October 2014, just one week after the hunt we have just been discussing had ended. This time, the
submarine was seen just off the island of Stora Höggarn, which is much closer to Stockholm than the
sightings that were made during the submarine hunt. In response to the sighting, Sweden sent it's
submarine-hunting corvette, the CMS Malmo, to look for the sub.

54
Let's look at where all the sightings were made on a map.

(Previously, I provided a link to a map which showed the first three sightings. This map was shown to the
public by Anders Grenstad during a press conference on Sunday. One of the sightings is where the photo
was taken. SVT Nyheter tried to find the location where the photo was taken, and they were
unsuccessful. The asked the military about this, and after thinking about it for a few hours, they said that
they lied about the location. Their reason for lying was that they didn't want to let Russia know that they
knew where the sightings were made. What-ever. Anyway, this map shows the first five sightings - the
"true" locations are in red, and the lies in black51.)

Here is the location of the 31 October sighting, compared to the location of the first five sightings we
already discussed:

51
Here's another source showing locations of the first five sightings (this map omits the false locations).

55
As you can see, the 31 October sighting was very close to Stockholm. Because this location is so far
inside the archipelago, there is only one possible route back to the Baltic Sea for a submarine.

Here's what we're supposed to believe:

1. Just one week after Sweden nearly discovered a Russian sub in their waters, Russia decided to
send yet another submarine into Swedish territory. This time, they decided to go so far into the
archipelago that there was only one way out. Those Russians certainly are thrill seekers!

2. The evil Putin is repeatedly sending submarines into Sweden's territory while the propaganda
surrounding the Ukraine was at a fevered pitch, risking an international incident if any were
discovered.

3. Sweden sent out their "submarine-hunting" corvette to intercept the submarine. There was
only one exit for the submarine, so all the Swedish ship had to do was wait for it at this
chokepoint. Nevertheless, it seemed to slip away.

4. Like all Russian submarines, once they get to their destination, something happens to them
and they are forced to travel on the surface.

It all seems logical. At least if you're an American imbecile.

The original Dagens Nyheter articles say that the person who saw the submarine, who has "extensive
military experience" and was deemed credible by the Swedish military, was able to distinguish the
submarine tower when he saw the vessel (as we will see, people in boats right next to the submarine,
however, could not distinguish the vessel as a submarine at all). In addition, he was one of the few
Swedes that has a camera, so he took pictures of it. The original articles did not show the pictures, but
they compared them to the image we have already seen (that photo is called the "Orno image" in these
articles, because it was taken near the island of Orno). The articles say that the Orno image was "blurry
and difficult to decipher". That's an understatement. However, they say that the new images, although
taken from further away, are of a much better quality.

A couple days later, Svenska Dagbladet published an article that interviewed the man who took the
photos. His name is Sven-Olof Kviman, and he is a retired naval officer who led many of the Swedish
submarine hunts in the 1980s. You couldn't ask for a more credible source. This sighting may be for real!

That same day, Dagens Nyheter also published an article where they interviewed Sven-Olof. Their article
includes a video of the interview, and, get ready for it .... one of the actual photos! Are you ready to see
proof of a Russian submarine in Swedish waters? Remember, this photo was taken by a retired military
officer who led previous sub hunts, and the photo is of a much better quality than the Orno image, and
we'll be able to see the submarine tower. Without further ado, here it is:

56
It certainly is a much better image! I guess it's likely the sub is Russian, because there is someone
parasailing right above it with a Russian flag! Probably a Spetsnaz.

Just kidding.

Here is the real image:

57
This image is enlarged. This is the actual picture:

58
Really? This is getting more and more ridiculous. The blob on the left side of the "Russian sub" is another
vessel, and Sven-Olof wonders why that boat "did not notice the submarine". Could the answer be that
it wasn't a submarine??

(The image in the inset is obviously photoshopped. There is no way you can blow up that original image
and end up with what is shown in the inset. This is real life, not "The Blade Runner").

Let's put the two photos that were taken of the Russian sub side-by-side:

That's pretty much all the evidence there is that there was a Russian sub in Sweden's waters. Are you
convinced?

The US media covered this nonsense, of course. For example, Foreign Policy ran an article about the
sighting, but, not surprisingly, they decided not to show the photo.

The media emphasized that this photo from 31 October was much better evidence than the Orno image.
The Orno image is also much better evidence than the sighting52 that started the entire submarine hunt,
because the Orno image was at least an image, whereas the sighting that started the submarine hunt
did not involve an image. So here is how the evidence ranks:

The entire submarine hunt started based on evidence that was far, far less convincing than this:

52
Here, for the sake of argument, I am assuming here that the "event" that started the submarine hunt was a
submarine sighting.

59
Impressive.53

But the story is not over. When this story emerged, the military was still investigating the incident. A few
months later, they completed their six month investigation. And what did the Swedish military conclude
after 6 months of studying this incident?

They discovered that the boat in the photo was actually a Swedish fishing boat! The name of the boat is
the Time Bandit.

I looked up the Time Bandit online54. On the next page (I want the suspense to build) is a picture of it.
When you see it, remember that the submarine hunt started based on a sighting that had far less
substance than this one.

You can now turn the page...

53
Not only is this another lame photo, but the Swedes were actually proud of it. They got so cocky after releasing
it, a couple weeks later they came out with a story where an anonymous source claimed there were actually four
submarines in Swedish waters during the October sub hunt. No evidence was given. There was no reason what this
was based on. Nothing. This story got little traction even in Sweden.
54
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/265635190

60
 You can't make this stuff up!!

I laughed uncontrollably for 10 minutes after seeing this.55 I hope you are laughing as well.

Earlier in the paper I alluded to an incident where the Swedish military was hunting for a Russian
submarine, but then realized that the submarine was actually a mink. With that in mind, I'd like to give
you a test. Look at the following three pictures, and see if you can pick which one is a photo of the
Novorossiysk:

55
Sometimes I forget that the objective of all this Russia propaganda is to garner support from Americans for a
future war with Russia, a war that could easily become nuclear. When I remember this, it's not as funny.

61
If you picked the third one, maybe you should be in charge of Sweden's military.

Serge Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, was asked the following question by Dagens Nyheter:

There has been much talk in recent years about Russia’s activities in the Baltics. Could you
comment on the alleged presence of a Russian submarine in Swedish territorial waters?

Here is his response, which includes a reference to the Time Bandit:

I cannot recall any reports from Sweden confirming the presence of a Russian submarine in your
territorial waters. Usually a discovery of a Russian submarine would make newspaper headlines.
But when several weeks later it turns out that it had nothing to do with Russia and wasn’t even a
submarine, this revelation doesn’t make it to the headlines.

Funny.

Victory!

So what did the Swedish military do after exposing themselves to the world as a bunch of imbeciles?
Claim victory, of course. On 14 November, approximately one month after the submarine hunt started,

62
the Swedish military announced to the world that they were now 100% certain that a foreign submarine
had violated their waters. They presented four pieces of evidence that brought them to this conclusion.
Three of them were supporting evidence, and there was one "crucial" observation which was
instrumental in arriving at their conclusion. Let's cover the three supporting pieces first, and leave the
best until last.

1. First, there was the picture. Here it is again:

Sorry, not that one. Here is the one they meant:

Not much better. We've discussed this enough. Let's move on.

2. The second piece of supporting evidence was something that was released for the first time on 14
November. It was a sonar image of the sea bed showing a groove on the bottom, which was supposedly
left by the Russian sub. Here is the image:

63
The issue with this image is this: submarines don't propel themselves while underwater by dragging
themselves along the sea bed. Submarines do not move in the same way as snakes. Submarines use
propellers, moving through the water above the sea floor.

I didn't know if you knew that.

But maybe I don't understand submarines. Let's get another opinion.

Let's get the opinion of Pavel Felgenhauer.

Why get Pavel's opinion? Let's find out.

Pavel is a Defense Analyst based in Moscow. His job is to provide anti-Russian propaganda for use by the
US government and their media.

The following paragraph supports the claim that Pavel is anti-Russian, and a favorite of the US neocon
establishment.

Pavel is a member of the Jamestown Foundation, an anti-Russian56, neocon think tank. Robert B.
Brannon, a retired Captain in the US Navy, wrote a book titled Russian Civil-Military Relations, in which
he described Pavel as a "respected military journalist" (p. 184). Zoltan Barany, a member of CSIS, the
powerful think tank whose job is to endorse whatever war is currently on the table, quoted Pavel (in his
book Democratic Breakdown and the Decline of the Russian Military) saying Russia's military has "poor
training, bad morale, and nonexistent discipline". Not surprisingly, Barany describes Pavel as a

56
Even the Washington Post describes the Jamestown Foundation as a think tank which has "long taken a critical
view of Russia". Washington Post, " Surrealpolitik; How a Chechen Terror Suspect Wound Up Living on Taxpayers'
Dollars Near the National Zoo", 20 March 2005

64
"respected military expert"57. London's The Evening Standard quoted Pavel saying that Putin was
coordinating the "denials and obfuscations" coming from Moscow in the wake of the MH17 incident.
The article described Pavel as a "respected" defense analyst58.

Summary: The US establishment loves Pavel. Pavel never passes a chance to make an obnoxious anti-
Russian comment, which is why the US media loves him.

Just for fun, let's evaluate some predictions made by Pavel to see how accurate they are.

In the second day of the war between Russia and Georgia, Pavel said that Russia was in for a "long and
difficult war" with Georgia's "quite good military". The war lasted 3 more days after Pavel's comment
before Georgia was defeated.

After Turkey downed a Russian jet in Syria, Pavel said that a war between Turkey and Russia was "most
likely". There was no war.

In March of 2014, Pavel said that Russia "may find it hard to resists the temptation to attack Ukraine",
saying that the window of opportunity for an attack would be between the beginning of April and mid-
May. There was no attack. In October of 2016, Pavel said that Russia may seize Ukrainian territory in
mid-January 2017. In mid-January, when the attack did not happen, Pavel changed the date of the
Russian attack on Ukraine to August. The attack did not happen in August.

Summary: Pavel is an imbecile.

The point of all this is that Pavel is 100% pro-US and anti-Russia. He exists to please the West.

Now that we know who this person is, let's see what Pavel said about the sonar image. One would
expect he would say it is damning evidence of a Russian submarine in Swedish waters, and that a war
between Sweden and Russia is "most likely". Instead, Pavel said that "...he is not convinced of the
evidence. Submarines do not sit on the seabed, except in an emergency. They are not made to lie on the
seabed".

No. Fucking. Shit.

Even Pavel the imbecile could not lower himself to endorse this nonsense, which is saying a lot.

3. The third piece of evidence is also new. It is another report from a private citizen who saw the sub,
this time from a height. Because this person is a typical poor Swede without a camera, this is just
another piece of nonsense.

Now it is time for the grand finale. It's time to reveal the piece of evidence that was given the "highest
assessment level, confirmed submarine, and is vital to the finding that a violation had occurred". What

57
Barany, Zoltan, Democratic Breakdown and the Decline of the Russian Military (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2007), p. 35
58
Stewart, Will, The Evening Standard, "MH17 Cover-Up is Like Putin's Watergate", 27 July 2015.

65
makes this evidence even more damning is that this "crucial observation was made by the Armed Forces
own sensors."

Do you want to know what this crucial, vital finding was?

You can't. Why not? Turn the page to find out.

It's a secret!
Of course it's a secret. This is what countries always do when backed into a corner as a result of their
own lies. The say that they are not lying, and they would love to show you that they are not lying, but
they can't, because it's all top secret, and if they told you what their evidence was all hell would break
loose.

In summary: "We are not lying. Trust us."

Bullshit.
It is likely that most people in the US believe this nonsense, but most people in the US are imbeciles.

And what did the media do when this secret evidence was (not) revealed? They took a victory lap! They
talked about how it was a "disappointing kind of victory" after the "definitive evidence" of the
submarine was revealed.

Definitive evidence that you are not allowed to see.

Truly disturbing.

66
This is how the story stood for nearly a year. Then, on 23 Sept 2015, the Swedish Armed Forces released
their final report on the submarine hunt. After blathering for some time about how sure they are that a
submarine was in their waters (without releasing any more evidence, of course), they say something
important. Remember the crucial "secret" evidence that was "vital" to the finding that a violation had
occurred? It turns out that this evidence does not point to a foreign submarine in Swedish waters, and
that there is "another explanation" for whatever the secret information is.

Isn't that interesting?

What's also interesting is that the Swedish media reported this news, but the US media decided to
ignore it. Surprised?

Although the Swedish media reported this news, they did not make a big fuss over the announcement
that the most important piece evidence was nonsense. They were still quite sure that a Russian sub was
in their waters. After all, the government told them that's what happened!

The story again disappeared until June of 2016, when more details of the "secret" evidence surfaced.

On 11 June 2016, Swedish radio reported that the sounds that the Swedish military heard that they
thought were coming from a Russian submarine were actually coming from a SWEDISH SOURCE!!59

How's that for "another explanation"?

At this point, even the Swedish media could no longer keep quiet and continue spewing propaganda:

This is what Svenska Dagbladet had to say:

With regards to the submarine hunt, the Swedish Government has to put all its cards on the
table

Information reported by Echo that the Armed Forces had confused an allegedly unambiguous
submarine intrusion with "a Swedish object" now makes it no longer acceptable to hide behind
the label of classified information. Keeping silent is simply not good enough if they want to
maintain their credibility.

... something has to be said. Otherwise, the Government has squandered all credibility regarding
submarine issues.

For sentient beings, the Swedish Government squandered all credibility a long, long time ago.

This is what Göteborgs-Posten said:

It would appear that it had been the intention of the Swedish Armed Forces that the Swedish
people remain in the dark regarding the Navy chasing a Swedish object instead of a foreign -

59
Earlier, I talked about the reports from DavidCrouch and Kim Sengupta that talked about a submarine in a photo
that turned out to be a Swedish submarine. Maybe Sweden started chasing their own submarine!

67
 implicitly Russian - submarine in 2014. And when the Swedish Government was later informed,
why did they decide to put the lid on it? This whole situation is striking and has damaged the
Armed Forces and the government's credibility and confidence in Sweden's security policy.

Not only was the truth withheld from the public, but the Defense Committee and the
Department for Foreign Affairs were also kept in the dark. Despite what the Government says
regarding matters of foreign policy, the Department for Foreign Affairs should be kept informed.

Instead, the Government hid the data within the newly formed Security Council which appears
to only consist of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and Defense Minister.

Does it seem like someone is lying to you? It should.60

BTW, the US media did not say a word about the "crucial" evidence being bullshit.

Not. A. Word.
Yet another incident

There was another revelation in the original report from Swedish radio. In February of 2016, the
Swedish media broke a story about yet another submarine sighting. In the spring of 2015, the Swedish
Navy was conducting military exercises when they noticed a submarine periscope. The public was not
notified of the incident at the time, but for an unstated reason, the public was notified in February of
2016. The US media unsurprisingly picked up the story, implying that the submarine was, of course,
Russian. The same article that revealed the story about the "Swedish Source" also told the truth about
this story as well. The submarine that appeared during the Swedish Naval exercise was German. There
was no word about why a German submarine was hanging around a Swedish naval exercise. One more
thing - although the US media reported on the original story, they were once again silent when the truth
was revealed.

Summary

So that's the story. The submarine hunt started with an "event" that the Swedish military could not give
any details about whatsoever. They could not even confirm that the "event" was a submarine sighting.
This "event" occurred just up the coast from a hotel that has a submarine that used to belong to the
Swedish Navy, which they use to give rides to tourists. The next day, some elderly Swedes saw the
tourist sub and took a picture of it, thinking it was the evil Russian sub. Then a pedophile claimed he saw
the sub, but only wanted to tell the newspapers, and not the military. The military deemed the report
"credible" after talking to the pedophile on the phone. There was also the story of a sinister man in black
who turned out to be retired Swedish fisherman. And don't forget the story of a suspicious Russian oil
tanker, which was not doing anything suspicious. Finally, there was the story of the distress call and the
intercepted, encrypted call, which were denied by the Swedish military when the story emerged, and
were later revealed by the Swedish press to have been fabricated.

60
The shocking thing is that this story saw the light of day. Imagine what doesn't make it to the newspapers.

68
Here, then, are the only two pieces of "evidence" from this sub hunt:

Regarding the photo on the left, it was described in the Swedish media as a lesser quality image (more
"blurry and difficult to decipher"), than one that turned out to be this:

The photo on the left could very well be the "Time Bandit". Or a mink.

As for the image on the right, even a top propagandist for the West couldn't lower himself to say the
track was left by a submarine. He understands that submarines do not crawl on the seabed.

Swedes are finally becoming embarrassed by this submarine nonsense, and books are beginning to
emerge in Sweden that address all the lies.

The real reasons for the sub hunt/propaganda campaign

The was no submarine is Swedish waters. The entire fiasco was an orchestrated propaganda campaign
carried out for several reasons:

1. The main reason is always simple anti-Russia fear-mongering. Since Putin became president, Russia
has been working towards becoming a sovereign country. This drives the US crazy, and their ultimate
goal is the same as in every other country on the planet - to install a puppet regime that does whatever

69
they say. There are not many countries left that are not Washington puppets61, and the ones that are
not just happen to be the same ones that Washington labels as "evil". The main goal of this propaganda
campaign is good old fashioned Russia-bashing.

2. Sweden's defense budget is also a target of the propaganda campaign. Here is the problem with
Sweden's defense budget62:

In 15 years (1993 to 2008), Sweden cut their defense budget in half63. The US considers this an outrage.
In comparison, this is what the US spends on defense:

61
I am not suggesting that the US government is the ultimate power. Even Washington is a puppet to larger
forces.
62
Data from World Bank
63
As a percentage of GDP.

70
The US spends 3 times as much money relative to GDP as Sweden does. The US wants Sweden to spend
more, and the submarine hunt was, in part, intended to increase Sweden's military budget.

Just two weeks before the submarine hunt, Sweden elected a new president - Stefan Löfven, a Social
Democrat. He had indicated before the election that he wanted to increase defense spending, but the
submarine hunt allowed him to propose an even "greater-than-expected" increase64. The budget
proposal came less than a week after the sub hunt started. Isn't that perfect timing!65

3. Washington is constantly pushing for Sweden to join NATO. The sub hunt provided a good
opportunity to ramp up the "join NATO" talk.

OK, back to our story. When we left off, it was mid-September, and Russia's media said that the
Novorossiysk would be heading to the Northern Fleet for tests. Two months later, in November, the
Novorossiysk arrived at the Northern Fleet, as advertised66. The Novorossiysk remained with the
Northern Fleet for over half a year. Then, in late July of 2015, Russian media announced that the

64
For some examples of the constant discussion of Sweden's defense budget during the sub hunt, see here, and
here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.
65
But if you mention the timing, you are a "conspiracy theorist", and should be ignored: "A conspiracy theory that
the submarine scare was manufactured to strengthen the navy’s case for greater finance was widely discussed on
social media. 'The timing is almost too good to be true,' according to Aftonbladet."
66
" The Novorossiysk, Russia's new diesel-electric submarine, has arrived at a Northern Fleet base from the
shipyard in St Petersburg for deep water trials in the Barents Sea." BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, "Russian
Diesel-Electric Sub to be Taken Through Deep Water Tests", 6 November 2014, source: Interfax

71
submarine would be headed to the Black Sea in August.67 This is very similar to what happened with the
Stary Oskol. The Russian media announced ahead of time that the sub would be heading towards the
Black Sea, and thereby going through the English Channel. A little over a week later, on 4 August, the
acting spokesman of the Northern Fleet announced that the crew of the Novorossiysk has "completed a
cycle of the ship’s basic preparation, replenished provisions and is fully prepared to make an inter-fleet
passage from the Barents to the Black Sea to its permanent base in Novorossiysk".

At this point, the departure was imminent. If you read the Russian media, you would know that in the
coming weeks, the Novorosiysk would be travelling south through the North Sea, then passing through
the English Channel on its way to the Black Sea.

IT IS NOT A SECRET!

A little over two weeks later, the Novorossiysk was being escorted through the EEZ of the Netherlands
by the Dutch Navy. Who could have possibly predicted that? Just like the Stary Oskol, it was travelling on
the surface, accompanied by a tugboat68:

This was reported by the Russian media. The Western media said nothing.

67
"Two Russian Varshavyanka-class submarines, the Novorossiysk and the Rostov-on-Don, will be transferred to
the Black Sea Fleet in August and December respectively, the Southern Military District's press service said Friday.
'In August, the submarine 'Novorossiysk' will carry out an inter-fleet transfer to the Black Sea Fleet. The arrival of
the submarine 'Rostov-on-Don' to its place of permanent deployment is expected in December 2015,' the press
service said in a statement."
68
"The Project 636.3 class boat, the first of six due to be delivered to the Black Sea fleet, has passed through the
English Channel surfaced, under tow from Northern Fleet rescue tug SB-406 in order to preserve its engine service-
life, the report said. The boat will be passed on to a similar tug from the Black Sea fleet at a set point on the
world's oceans, which will carry on towing the submarine to Novorossiysk..." BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 20
August 2015, source: Interfax

72
When the sub passed through the English Channel, the Western media also did not say a word about it.
It was only mentioned a week later in an article in the Independent. The purpose of that article was to
express outrage over the fact that Spain let the Novorossiysk refuel there, and the passage through the
Channel was mentioned only in passing. Here is the quote:

Security sources now fear that the state-of-the-art Novorossiysk, which passed through the
English Channel last week, may operate from a Russian naval base on the annexed Ukranian
peninsula of Crimea.

The Russian media, however, did report the passage through the Channel, likewise, only in passing69:

The diesel-electric submarine Novorossiysk continues a transfer deployment from one fleet to
another, following weapons system trials with the Northern Fleet, Interfax-AVN reported on 20
August, citing a military-diplomatic source. The Project 636.3 class boat, the first of six due to be
delivered to the Black Sea fleet, has passed through the English Channel surfaced...

On 16 September 2015, the Novorossiysk passed through the Bosphorus and into the Black Sea, just like
Russia had been announcing in their media for many years. The Russian media covered the event,
complete with pictures:

On the following day, the English-language Russian media also covered the event. This was also not
covered in the Western media.

The pattern
The same sequence of events occurred for every one of the six identical submarines I listed above. First,
the hull is "laid down", which means construction of the sub commences. Some time later, the sub is
launched and then tested by the shipyard. Afterward, the sub is commissioned by the Navy, and the
Navy also tests it for a time in the Baltic Sea. After this initial testing, the sub travels to the Northern

69
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, August 20, 2015 Thursday, "Russian Naval Movements and Deployments"

73
Fleet, where more extensive testing is done. After this final testing is complete, the sub heads for the
Black Sea, and passes through the English Channel on the way. All these steps are constantly reported
on in the Russian media.

None of it is a secret.

So let's get back to our original question:

Why was the Russian submarine in the English Channel?

The answer is the same for all six subs:

The subs are passing through the English Channel on their way to their permanent home.

Not very exciting, is it. The truth is not as exciting as the lies.

Novorossiysk summary
The Novorosiysk passed through the English Channel sometime during the week of 16 August 2015. The
only time this was mentioned in the Western media was in an article in the Independent. The article was
published over a week after the sub passed through the Channel, and the incident was only mentioned
in passing. The Russian media mentioned the sub passing through the Channel 8 days before the
Independent did, but also only in passing.

When the Novorossiysk was actually passing through the English Channel, nobody in the world gave a
crap.

Rostov-on-Don
The second submarine in the series, the Rostov-on-Don, followed the same pattern as the Novorossiysk,
as did all the submarines listed above. It was commissioned at the end of 2014, and the following week,
the Russian media began discussing the eventual trip (which occurred nearly a year later) from the
Northern Fleet to the Black Sea (through the English Channel)70. By July of 2015, the Russians announced
that this trip would take place in December71. On 26 October (Monday), Russia announced72 that the trip
had begun 3 days earlier, which meant it was nowhere near the English Channel yet. A few days later,
Russian media announced that the sub was still in the Baltic - there was a delay because the sub was

70
"Before the submarine begins its test operations, it must travel about 2,500 nautical miles (4,630 km) from St.
Petersburg to the Barents Sea in Russia's north. After finishing all scheduled tests, the submarine will travel to its
future permanent place of service in the Novorossiysk port in the Black Sea."
71
"'The arrival of the submarine 'Rostov-on-Don' to its place of permanent deployment is expected in December
2015,' the press service said in a statement."
72
" Cycle of tests of new submarine of project 636.3 Rostov-on-Don armed with strike missile system Kalibr was
completed in the Northern Fleet. Last Friday, the submarine started voyage to its permanent base in the Black Sea
Fleet. Completion of the voyage is planned for the beginning of December." Defence and Security (Russia), "Black
Sea Fleet Expects New Ships in December of 2015:, 26 October 2015

74
being repaired. Less than a week later, the Russian media reported that the sub was on its way73. It was
near this date, 5 November 2015, that the sub passed through the English Channel. I could not find a
single news report, even from the Russians, who cared enough about it to mention it. Twelve days later,
reports emerged that the Rostov-on-Don was firing missiles at ISIS from the Mediterranean.

Stary Oskol

As we have already seen, when the Stary Oskol passed through the English Channel, the Western media
went batshit crazy. The article that Americans read said that Russia was testing NATO's defenses, that
the sub was travelling submerged, and there was no tugboat accompanying the sub. These statements
are all lies.

Krasnodar

The Krasnodar passed through the Channel on 8 May 2017. It had been nearly a year since the Stary
Oskol passed by, so the media decided to covered this passage as well (although not with as much
hysteria as with the Stary Oskol). It was mainly covered by the British tabloids, Murdoch's Sky News, and
the Telegraph. The UK Navy reported it, along with a specialty Navy online publication. These articles
were all very short, and contained a minimum of propaganda74. English language Russian media also
covered it.

Veliky Novgorod and Kolpino

The last two subs passed through the Channel together on about 17 August 2017. While the subs were
in the North Sea, the Dutch Navy tweeted that they were escorting them. The specialty Navy online
publication mentioned that the Dutch escorted them, as did Russian publications. When the subs passed
through the Channel, nobody in the world covered it, even though two subs were passing through at the
same time. It could have been reported as an invasion! Why wasn't it? Either because it had only been 3
months since the last sub passing (you can't have these stories too often, or the public might start to
catch on that this is all routine), or because there was some other Russian drama going on. Likely
something about Russiagate.

Summary

Here, then, is a summary of how each of the passages through the English Channel by these 6 identical
subs was covered by the Western MSM:

73
" Rostov-on-Don submarine passed armament trials held at the Northern Fleet and is joining the Black Sea
Fleet."
74
AN Australian newspaper did have a nonsense article once the Krasnodar arrived in the Mediterranean. At one
point, they say: "The submarine had travelled on the surface — in plain sight — through the North Sea from
Russia’s northern naval bases. A succession of NATO warships — including Britain’s HMS Somerset — kept a
watchful eye on it, waiting for it to submerge." Then, in a new paragraph, was the dramatic conclusion: "It didn’t."
Funny. With the Stary Oskol, the media tries to pretend that the sub was submerged when it wasn't. When the
Krasnodar passes through, they acknowledge that the sub always stayed on the surface, but they still have to meke
their stupid comments about it. They're children.

75
If you remember, the Sun broke the story about the Stary Oskol passing through the English Channel
with an article published on 7 June 2016. In it, they said this:

It is the first time in over a decade a Russian submarine has been spotted in the English Channel
- although some have certainly made the journey unseen and unreported.

The MSM says crap like this to make it sound like Russia is suddenly doing crazy things like having subs
pass through the English Channel, but it happens all the time. Yes, some subs did in fact make the
journey within the last decade. In fact, two identical subs made the journey within the past year. These
events did not go unreported because the subs were submerged, or because these events are secret in
any way. They went unreported because the MSM chose not to cover them.

The propaganda shitstorm that ensued when the Stary Oskol passed through the English Channel was
completely arbitrary. They could just as easily have conducted the same shitstorm when the Rostov-on-
Don passed through the Channel, and ignored the Stary Oskol, instead of vice versa. They can't go
batshit crazy every single time a Russian ship passes through the English Channel, because it happens
constantly, and even stupid Americans might catch on. So they pick their spots. One article from the
Netherlands counted 54 military escorts off their coast in 2016, almost all of which were Russian ships.
That's an average of one a week. There are over 60 ships in Russia's Northern Fleet, and even more in
the Baltic Fleet. Sometimes they go places, and they pass through the English Channel on the way. So
fucking what.

It is not a secret. They are not testing anyone's defenses. They are just passing through.

Question

If you actually read everything up to this point, you likely know a little bit more about the passage of the
Stary Oskol through the English Channel than you did when you started. Knowing what you know now,
go back and read the articles from the Business Insider, which is what Americans read about the

76
incident, and compare that to what was written in the English language Russian media. Here they are
again:

"The British Navy Intercepted a Russian Submarine on its Way to the English Channel", Business
Insider, 8 June

"Here's What it Looks Like When a Russian Submarine Gets Intercepted by the Royal Navy",
Business Insider, 9 June

"UK Media Hail Navy's 'Intercept' of Russian Sub… Which Was Not Hiding", RT, 8 June

Which country has the propaganda issues?

More Russian Submarine Propaganda

The submarine stories I've discussed up to this point is a sample of the propaganda surrounding Russian
subs over the past few years. Propaganda about Russian submarines, however, has been going on for
decades. If I had the time, I would discuss this history in detail, but I don't. This paper is already too long.
I do, however, want to say a few words about the history of the subject.

On 27 October 1981, a Soviet submarine became stranded on the rocks in Swedish territory near the
naval base at Karlskrona75. Many other submarine intrusions in Swedish waters occurred soon
afterwards. Although Russian involvement in these subsequent incidents was never proven, the MSM
blamed them all on Russia nonetheless, and this assumption went basically unchallenged for over 20
years.

In 2004, however, a book was published by Ola Tunander titled The Secret War Against Sweden - US and
British Submarine Deception in the 1980s. The following is from the book summary76:

Following the stranding of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine in 1981 on the Swedish

archipelago, a series of massive submarine intrusions took place within Swedish waters - later
described as the first Soviet military initiative against a west European state since the Berlin
crisis. After a dramatic submarine hunt in 1982, a Swedish parliamentary commission stated that
six Soviet submarines had 'played their games' in the Stockholm archipelago - one even in
Stockholm harbour. The Swedish government protested strongly to the Soviet Union, and
relations between the two countries were icy for several years afterwards. Today, however, the

75
Although mainstream sources routinely assume the Russian sub was in Swedish waters intentionally, and was
doing something evil, a submarine inquiry in 2001 found, in part, that the Russian sub had not necessarily entered
Swedish waters on purpose: see SOU 2001:85, Perspektiv på Ubåtsfrågan (Stockholm: Statens Offentliga
Utredningar, Försvarsdepartementet 2001), pp. 64-93, available here:
http://www.regeringen.se/rattsdokument/statens-offentliga-utredningar/2001/11/sou-200185/
http://www.regeringen.se/49bb4a/contentassets/8eb8b2c27c2e47c09c58dc496715be1d/del-1-t.o.m.-kap.-3-
perspektiv-pa-ubatsfragan (as quoted in Tunander, Ola, "Subs and PSYOPs: The 1982 Swedish Submarine
Intrusions", Intelligence and National Security (2013), Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 252-281, p. 255)
76
Tunander, Ola, The Secret War Against Sweden - US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (London:
Frank Cass, 2004), p. i

77
 evidence for these alleged Soviet intrusions appears to have been manipulated or simply
invented. Classified documents and interviews cited in this book point to covert Western rather
than Soviet activity. This is backed up by former US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger,
who stated, in a Swedish television interview reproduced in this book, that Western 'testing'
operations were carried out regularly in Swedish waters, and by former British Navy Minister Sir
Keith Speed, who has confirmed the existence of such operations. Royal Navy submarine
captains have also admitted to having carried out top-secret operations in the Swedish
archipelago.

Ola Tunander's revelations in this book makes it clear that the United States and Britain ran a
'secret war' in Swedish waters to test Sweden's capability and will in the 1980s. Within a couple
of years, the number of Swedes perceiving the Soviet Union as a direct threat had increased
from 5-10 per cent (in 1980) to 45 per cent (in 1983). In the same period, the number of Swedes
viewing the Soviets as unfriendly increased from 30 per cent to more than 80 per cent. This
Anglo-American 'secret war' was a deception operation aimed at exerting political influence
over Sweden...

The subs were American and British, not Russian. The whole thing was a false flag psyops mission.

Tunander is a very credible author and his book is impeccably researched. Some critiques of his work,
however, have been published by hacks defending the empire.77 I do not have time to go over the entire
debate here. That paper would be hundreds of pages long. I do, however, want to present who
Tunander is, and who has supported his conclusions.

Tunander got his PhD in 1989 on US Maritime Strategy and the Geopolitics of the North, and since then
he has been a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway78. His book is
based on declassified documents including war diaries, internal reports, intelligence briefings, etc., and
from interviews of politicians and military personal from Sweden and several NATO countries. The book
is nearly 400 pages long and is impeccably documented. It was part of a series on Naval policy and
strategy printed by Frank Cass publishers, a division of Taylor & Francis that publishes books on military
and strategic studies.79

Let's look at a few examples of people who have supported Tunanders conclusions:

77
See Lillbacka, Ralf, "A Swedish Ebbinghaus Illusion? Submarine Intrusions in Swedish Territorial Waters and
Possible Soviet Deception" Intelligence and National Security, 25(5), 2010, pp. 656-681, and Lillbacka, Ralf, "A
Critical Assessment of Alleged Evidence of Western Submarine Intrusions in Swedish Territorial Waters",
Intelligence and National Security, 30(4), 2015, pp. 508-537. Lillbacka's 2010 article was a collection of strawman
arguments, and was dealt with easily by Tunander in: Tunander, Ola, "Subs and PSYOPs: The 1982 Swedish
Submarine Intrusions", Intelligence and National Security (2013), Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 252-281. The more recent
Lillbacka article is slightly better in substance, and Tunander has not yet replied to it. He likely will not at this point,
since he has retired as of 2016: (see https://vimeo.com/169538548 ).
78
You can read his biography here: https://www.prio.org/People/Person/?x=5044
79
A list of the books in the series is here:
https://www.librarything.com/series/Frank+Cass%3A+Naval+Policy+and+History

78
The following quote is from the forward of Tunanders' book, which was written by Brigadier-General
Lars Hansson of Sweden's Navy:

On 1 October 1982, after four years as chief at the Swedish Defence Staff, I entered my new
position as Chief of Stockholm Coastal Defense. I took over responsibility for an ongoing
wartime exercise with 4,000 men in the archipelago, including Special Forces, patrol vessels,
mine troops and artillery forces. My first meeting with my new staff was interrupted by a report
of a submarine periscope deep inside the archipelago at Muskö naval base. I cancelled the
meeting and contracted the regional commander. An intensive anti-submarine operation began,
which went on for two weeks. This incident influenced Swedish coastal defense activities for the
rest of the 1980s...I was convinced that the submarines originated in the Warsaw Pact. Ola
Tunander's research has provided a new basis of settling the question of the intruder's
nationality...Tunander's research is groundbreaking...

Tunander's conclusions are supported by the General that was in charge of Stockholm's coastal defense
at the time.

In 2005 the Danish Institute for International Studies wrote a 2,350 page report on Denmark's position
in the Cold War. The section dealing with the submarine incursions in Sweden agrees with Tunander's
analysis, and references his book repeatedly80.

Another example is Pekka Visuri. He has a PhD in Political science, is a retired colonel in the Finnish
Army, worked for 15 years at the Aleksanteri Institute (which focuses on the study of Russia and Eastern
Europe), and is presently a professor at the National Defense University in Helsinki. In 2006 he published
a book titled The Finnish Cold War81, and his views on the Swedish submarine question agree with
Tunander's.

Also, the Finnish President at the time of the submarine intrusions, Mauno Koivisto, supports Tunander's
conclusions, calling the sub intrusions Western "provocations".82

That's pretty much it. Once again, my point here is simply to mention that a credible, and, in my opinion,
absolutely convincing, argument exists that NATO has been fabricating the submarine incidents for
decades.

Real Story

80
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Danmark under den kolde krig - Den sikkerbedspolitiske situation
1945-1991, Volume 3 1979-1991 (Copenhagen: DIIS 2005), pp. 478-491, available here:
http://pure.diis.dk/ws/files/27986/KKBind3.pdf
81
Visuri, Pekka, Suomi Kylmässä Sodassa (Helsinki: Otava, 2006), as quoted in Tunander, Ola, "Subs and PSYOPs:
The 1982 Swedish Submarine Intrusions", Intelligence and National Security (2013), Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 252-281, p.
255
82
See: Tunander, Ola, "Subs and PSYOPs: The 1982 Swedish Submarine Intrusions", Intelligence and National
Security (2013), Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 252-281, p. 255

79
As I mentioned in the beginning of this paper, I was discussing Russia with someone at a bar, and I asked
them to cite a specific incident that contributed to their negative view about them. They referred to an
incident where a Russian military ship was "intercepted" in the English Channel, and said it was an
example of the Russian's being provocative with their military. When I looked up the incident, I
immediately came across the story of the Stary Oskol, and I assumed that this was what the person was
referring to. I was wrong. The person was actually referring to an incident that occurred in late October,
not June. In this incident, the Russians were sending several warships from the Northern Fleet to Syria to
participate in Russia's war against US-backed terrorists in that country, and when they passed through
the English Channel, the Western propaganda machine went bat shit crazy.

When the person recalled the incident, they mentioned how the Russian ships passed very close to the
British shoreline, so close that people could see them from shore. When I saw the following headline
from the Daily Mail's (21 october) article about the incident in late October, I realized that this was what
the person was really referring to:

The article even had a picture showing how close the Russian ship was to the British coast:

80
Holy crap! That's menacingly close to Britain!

It wasn't just tabloids discussing this nonsense. The "respectable" BBC was also aghast, saying that the
Kuznetsov was "just offshore from Dover harbor beneath the iconic white cliffs of Dover...".

"Just offshore...beneath the iconic white cliffs!" As you can tell from the picture above, the Kuznetsov
was right below those cliffs!! If a rock happened to roll down the cliff, it would have landed right on the
deck of the Kuznetsov!

NBC (also considered "respectable") also remarked how the Russian ships were "within sight of the
English coast" (and "close to Britain's coast" as well):

Do you know what else is "within sight of the British coast"?

Fucking France.

The Dover straight, you see, is less than 21 miles wide. Here is a map of the strait:

81
On the UK side of the Dover straight is: Dover! Home to the white cliffs of Dover. There are also white
cliffs on the French side at Cap Blanc Nez. Here is a picture of the French white cliffs, taken from Dover,
across the strait:

82
Hopefully, you now know immediately how stupid83 NBC is when they say that the Kuznetsov was
"within sight of the English coast". The Kuznetsov is a 1,000 foot long ship. It would be "within sight of
the English coast" no matter where it was in the Dover strait. It would be within sight of the English
coast if it had run aground on the French coast.

Even though the Kuznetsov would be visible no matter where they were, maybe they still went closer to
England than they had too. You know, just to be evil.

Let's try and figure out where they were exactly.

In the first 15 seconds of the BBC video, they begin by showing the British coast, and then pan back until
the Kuznetsov comes into view. It is obvious from this shot alone that the Kuznetsov is many, many
miles off the coast.

Maybe a comparison will help. Here is a photo taken from a different story from the Daily Mail:

83
Of course, they are not stupid. It's propaganda. They know it, and sentient people know it.

83
The photo above was taken 3 miles from shore. Compare that photo to the following one of the
Kuznetsov with the British coast in the background:

84
It should be clear that the Kuznetsov is much further from the coast than the whale is. I would say 7-8
miles.

Considering the fact that the Kuznetsov was passing through a very narrow strait, it's distance to the
British coast seems quite reasonable. If my estimate is correct, the ship was far closer to the center of
the strait than it was to the British coast.

But can we know where it was with a greater degree of certainty? Wouldn't it be nice if there was a
website that tracked the exact location of ships anywhere in the world, and we could just look up exactly
where it was?

Luckily, there are a couple of these websites. One is called marinetraffic.com and the other is
vesselfinder.com. These websites show the current location (and recent track for the previous 3 days84)
of all large vessels. The only catch is that the vessel must be equipped with AIS in order for its position to
appear on the website. AIS stands for automatic identification system, and it is required for vessels over
300 tons that are travelling internationally. The problem is that, although military vessels are equipped
with AIS, they rarely have their transponders turned on (although the US Navy may start turning theirs
on in high traffic areas since they seem to be crashing into civilian boats quite frequently lately).

The Kuznetsov did not have its AIS system turned on, but there were many ships travelling with the
Kuznetsov, and at least two of them did have their AIS systems functioning. One was the Nikolay Chiker,
and the other the Osipov. But we want to know where the Kuznetsov was! Luckily, knowing the path of
either of the other two vessels also tells us where the Kuznetsov was, because of the following fact
reported by the Daily Mail article I already cited:

The powerful fleet was ordered to pass through the Channel, which is one of the busiest
shipping lanes in the world, in single file.

The Russian ships went through the Dover strait single file. If we know the track of either the Nikolay
Chiker or the Osipov, then we know the path of the Kuznetsov.

They were following each other.

Here is where the position of the Osipov as it passed Dover, along with the path it took to get there:

84
If you pay for membership, the track history will be much longer.

85
The position of the Osipov on this map is 51o 1.43' north, 1o 22.61' east. This equals 51.0239 degrees
north, 1.3769 degrees east.

Here, then, is the distance from the Osipov to the British coastline:

86
 11.28 km = 7 miles
My estimate seems to be correct. You should learn to trust me.

Since the strait is nearly 21 miles wide, then the Kuznetsov would have been 10.5 miles off the British
coast if it was travelling right down the middle.

Maybe you're thinking, "it was closer to the British coast than that! Those evil Russians were saber-
rattling and threatening the UK! Nuke them!"

87
Before you get too upset, let's look at the same lat/long position cited above (51.0239o North, 1.3768o E)
on a different map (the red circle marks the position of the Osipov/Kuznetsov):

Are you wondering what those arrows are for? Or what the dark purple areas are? Let's look at the
entire map I took this from (I included the Osipov/Kuznetsov position on this map as well):

88
This is a map of the traffic separation scheme for the Dover Strait.

Because the Dover Strait is so busy, and so dangerous, a traffic separation scheme was instituted in 1967
to help avoid collisions.85 Traffic lanes are set up where traffic in each lane is going only in one direction,
and the lanes of traffic going in opposite directions are separated by "separation zones". This keeps
boats from smashing into each other. Smart.

85
See Cuyvers, Luc, The Strait of Dover, Volume Eight (International Straits of the World) (Dordrecht: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1986).

89
Because of this highly regulated system to regulate the traffic in the Dover Strait, all the ships passing
through the English Channel (other than local traffic) go through pretty much on the same path86, just
like all the Russian ships did. Here is a snapshot of what the traffic in the English Channel looks like (the
Dover Strait is in the upper right corner):

The local traffic is going every which way, but boats passing through pretty much follow the same path.

When the Daily Mail said that the Kuznetsov was "menacingly close to Britain", and the BBC said that
the ship was "beneath the iconic white cliffs of Dover", what they meant to say was:

"...the Kuznetsov passed through the Strait in the designated traffic lane, exactly where they
were supposed to, and exactly where every other ship passes through..."

Jackasses.

Maybe you're an asshole, and you're thinking, "but they were on the right side of the traffic lane, closer
to the British coast than they had to be!"

Let's address this stupid comment. If you look at the pictures in the Daily Mail article, most of them say
"Dover-Marina" in the bottom left corner, like this one:

86
The quote above says that the Russian ships were "ordered" to pass through the strait single file. All ships pass
through the strait single file, but with the Russian ships, the MSM has to say that they were "ordered" to do so. I
guess it makes them feel all manly.

90
Nigel Scutt runs the Dover Marina, and he went out and took most of the pics that ended up in the mass
media. I Emailed him, and he said that the Kuznetsov "passed eight miles off Dover at the closest point,
on the inshore side of the Varne Bank...".

First of all, eight miles off the coast corroborates our 7 mile calculation above pretty well. Secondly, let's
look at where the Varne Bank is on a chart (with the Osipov/Kuznetsov position marked once again):

91
The Russian vessels passed through on the right side of the channel so they would not run aground on
the Varne Bank. Seem reasonable?

In summary, the Russians passed through the English Channel...

exactly where they were fucking supposed to.

To summarize: the MSM reports about the Russian ships passing too close to Britain are all fucking
nonsense.

Nonsense propaganda remark #2

There's more nonsense to address. There is this, for example, from the Washington Post:

It is routine for Britain’s Royal Navy to shadow ships, but the route taken by the Russian convoy
— through the English Channel — was not routine.

“There’s huge amounts of theater here,” Paul Beaver, an aviation historian, told the BBC. He
said that normally the Russians would “go around the top of Scotland, down past Hebrides, past
Ireland on a deployment, and actually that’s probably the quickest route. This is very much
about power play....They want to be seen to be doing these things.”....

Jonathan Eyal, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in
London, said the passage through the English Channel in particular was a clear message from
the Russians that “they are back” and that “anything you can do, we can do as well,” he said.

Analysts said that the move was an intentional snub toward Britain as one of Europe’s most
vocal critics of Russia’s role in Syria.

According to the MSM, not only did the evil Russians supposedly go through the English Channel in the
wrong spot (which we just saw was nonsense), they were not supposed to be there in the first place.

We will focus on Beaver's comments, which are more objective and easier to address87. (Beaver, by the
way, is a signatory to the statement of principles for the neoconservative thinktank The Henry Jackson
Society, which should give you a hint as to where he's coming from).

Let's visualize what Beaver is saying by looking at a map:

87
The comments about the Russians sending a message which is both telling the world that they "they are back"
and the same time "[intentionally] snubbing" Britain are more ridiculous, but they will be addressed indirectly as
well.

92
Let's say you're on a boat in the upper/northern purple circle, and you want to go to the lower/southern
purple circle. There are two routes you can take, which I have marked "A" and "B". Remember these
designations - I will refer to them often.

Beaver makes two claims:

1) Route "A" is "probably" the quickest route.

2) Route "A" is "normally" the route that the Russians take.

Let's analyze both of these claims.

Claim #1 (Route "A" is "probably" the quickest route.)

Route "A" is slightly shorter, but that does not mean it is quicker.

93
The blue areas in the map look the same everywhere, don't they? Guess what. They're not. Some of the
blue areas are seas that are normally pretty calm, just like you might expect them to be when you see
the nice, calming, light blue color on the map. Some of the blue areas, however, are known for having
very large waves.

Let's look at a picture of an ocean that contains waves:

Let's compare that to a picture of the ocean when it is calm:

94
Here's a question: Would you rather travel in a boat for 100 miles through the ocean depicted in the top
photo to get to your destination, or would you instead prefer to travel 120 miles through the ocean
depicted in the bottom photo? I'd take the 120 mile journey through the bottom photo. Actually, I'd
prefer 200 miles in the bottom photo compared to 100 miles in the top88.

My point, obviously, is that when you are choosing a route to travel in the ocean, there is a lot more to
consider than distance. Beaver does not consider this, because he is spewing propaganda.

Let's compare routes "A" and "B" beyond the negligible difference in distance involved.

Route "A" is in the open fucking ocean. Much of route "B" is in the North Sea, which is protected from
the open ocean by the British islands. This makes a big fucking difference.

This difference can be seen by going to this website and mapping the average annual mean significant
wave height for the area we are looking at:

Do you see how the waves in the open ocean are, on average, much higher than the waves in the North
Sea? After seeing this map, which route do you want to travel on, "A" or "B"? I would pick "B". The
Russians pick "B" as well. This does not mean the Russians are evil.

88
I like sailboats, not motorboats, and there is not much wind in the bottom photo. This is bad for a sailor. The top
photo, however, has a little too much wind. Something in-between would be best, but being bored is better than
being tossed around violently.

95
Route B does not just provide a smoother trip, it also turns out to be much faster, even though it is
slightly longer. Waves, you see, slow down a boat dramatically. Here is a video of a Russian destroyer in
the North Atlantic. It is not travelling very fast - it's going up and down nearly as much as it is going
forward. In addition, it doesn't look like an enjoyable trip for the passengers.

Because of these things called waves, route "B" is much quicker than route "A".

How much quicker? One article says this:

This new itinerary [route "B"], has permitted to shave off several days of travel [as compared to
route [A]..."

Route "B" is several days quicker than route A (we will discuss this article further below). Beaver is either
a liar, or stupid.89

Claim 2: (Route "A" is "normally" the route that the Russians take)

Beaver says that taking the route through the English Channel "is not routine", and route "A" is the
route the Russian's "normally" take.

The UK's Independent newspaper makes a similar point:

The choice of route has been described as “posturing” by a British naval source, and comes amid
fraught relations between London and Moscow over ongoing Russian air strikes in
Aleppo.....Travelling via the English Channel is not typical for Russian boats headed for Syria.

Beaver/WaPo says that route "B" taken by the Kuznetsov is "not routine", and taking that route involves
"huge amounts of theater", and is a "power play" by the Russians. The Independent also says that route
"B" is "not typical", and quotes a "British naval source" describing the Russians taking the route as
"posturing".

But there are other opinions.

There is this from the Norwegian military, as reported in the BBC:

The Kuznetsov Task Group situation is normal routine for the Norwegian military...

There is this is from the Times of London:

The English Channel is the only logical route for Russian warships to make their way southwards
into the Mediterranean...

There is this is from the Economist:

The route down the North Sea is the obvious way for them to go. There is nothing particularly
provocative about it...

89
He's a liar.

96
Tangent!!: The Economist also took aim at a comment by Michal Fallon, Britain's Defense Secretary. This
is what Fallon had said about the Kuznetsov passage:

The Russian fleet that is now sailing from the North, presumably down into the Mediterranean,
is clearly designed to test the alliance.

Here was the response from the Economist:

To say, as did Michael Fallon, Britain’s defence secretary, that the Russians are seeking to test
NATO’s capabilities borders on the absurd...

It isn't just bordering on the absurd, it is in the geographical center of absurd. Why do I say that? Similar
to what we learned with the Stary Oskol incident, the Russian media discussed the Kuznetsov itinerary
in great detail. The Russian media announced on 2 July that the Kuznetsov would be headed to Syria in
October, on 21 September Russia's Defense Minister shared more details on the mission, on 7 October
the Washington Post said that the Kuznetsov would be headed for Syria "later this month" (someone
there reads the Russian media), and on 15 October, the day the Kuznetsov left its home base, it was also
in the media90, including Russia's, complete with this picture of the Kuznetsov leaving its home port:

After all this continual coverage of the Russian mission to Syria over the previous several months, UK's
Defense Secretary says that mission is designed to test NATO.

Test them to see if they read the paper?

Fallon is a fucking douchbag.

There is this from a BBC defense correspondent (reporting on the return trip of the Kuznetsov through
the Channel 2 months later)

90
BTW, Southfront is an excellent source.

97
 This is a routine operation.

There is this from a commanding officer in the Royal Navy:

... this sort of task is routine business...

And finally, we have this from the evil Russians91:

Royal Navy experts even made a "sensational" assumption that Russian ships will pass through
the North Sea and the English Channel. Are there other routes?

We seem to have two schools of thought about this subject:

The evidence seems to be in favor of the Kuznetsov passage through the Channel being pretty normal.
There are only two sources that said there was something unusual about the Kuznetsov passage through
the Channel. The comment in the Independent is relatively benign. The Washington Post, by
comparison, goes batshit crazy. Their sources (Beaver, Eyal and "analysts") are completely outraged at
the incident, and they each try to outdo the other with their ridiculous comments.

Coincidentally, 99% of Americans were only exposed to this article.

"Posturing"

Before we go any further, I'd like to make a couple comments about the "posturing" quote in the
Independent.

First of all, who made the comment? The article says that the quote comes from a "British naval source",
and later they say this:

A former First Sea Lord on Friday told The Telegraph that Russian posturing risked inflaming
tensions further.

91
Text: " Специалисты Королевского флота даже сделали «сенсационное» предположение, что российские
корабли пройдут через Северное море, Па-де-Кале и Ла-Манш. А что, есть другие маршруты?"

98
In this sentence, we find out that the "British naval source" is a "former First Sea Lord", but we still don't
know his name. They refer to an article in The Telegraph from the previous day, so I looked up that
article, and found that the name of the "British naval source" is "Lord West of Spithead". If you're
curious, here's what Spithead looks like:

Why can't the Independent just say the guy's name instead of referring to him as a "British naval source"
and a "former First Sea Lord"? Even the Telegraph, who initially named Spithead as the source of the
quote, said this in another article92 a week later:

Senior Royal Navy officers expect the task force to sail through the English Channel as early as
today in a show of strength dismissed as "posturing" by defence sources.

The Telegraph is the paper that initially quoted Spithead's "posturing" comment, but a week later, when
they refer to the comment again, they say it came from a "defence source".

I guess quoting a "British naval source" or a "defense source" sounds better than quoting "Lord West of
Spithead". It seems weird that they are embarrassed about his name.

Anyway, the following is from the Independent article:

A former First Sea Lord on Friday told The Telegraph that Russian posturing risked inflaming
tensions further.
Travelling via the English Channel is not typical for Russian boats headed for Syria. Instead, most
come directly down the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Mediterranean
Sea at the Turkish city of Istanbul.

92
Copy and paste this into a browser: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-
telegraph/20161020/282136405942706

99
After referring to Spithead's comment (without naming him, of course), the Independent makes the
same general claim the Washington Post did - saying that route "B" through the English Channel is
"posturing". The insane thing is what the Independent says is the "typical" route, which is to come
through the Bosphorus from the Black Sea. Here are these two routes on a map:

What in the fuck?!?

The propaganda message in both the WaPo and Independent articles is that the presence of the
Kuznetsov in the English Channel is unusual, and therefore evil. When you make this claim, it helps to
point out what the "typical" thing is for the Russians to do. In the WaPo article, Beaver says that the
typical thing is for Russia to do is to take route "A". In the Independent article, they say that it is typical
to send boats to Syria from the Black Sea.

The problem, however, is that the Kuznetsov was not in the fucking Black Sea!?!

Russia decided to send its only aircraft carrier to Syria, to bomb the US-backed terrorists with additional
planes and various other weapons. Russia's sole aircraft carrier is based the Northern Fleet. Russia does
not have an aircraft carrier in the Black Sea, or anywhere else in the world except the Northern Fleet.
Somehow, the Independent thinks Russia should have sent the Kuznetsov from the Black Sea, even
though it was not there, nor was it ever there.

You cannot send a ship from a place where it is not in existence. This sentence is fucking insane. The
writers at the Independent, however, know it really doesn't matter. They know that they can write

100
whatever they want because nobody knows, or will bother to look up, where the Black Sea is, anyway. It
doesn't have to make sense - people will just accept it no matter how ridiculous it is.

At least Beaver in the Washington Post picks as his "routine" route (route "A"), a route where the
starting point is where the Kuznetsov actually was. Let's give him credit for that, I suppose.

Routine: Some General Observations

Let's get back to our "routine/not routine" controversy outlined above.

The controversy surrounds the Kuznetsov being in the Channel, but what about Russian ships in general?
Is it routine for any Russian ships to be in the English Channel?

The answer is: yes, it is routine.

For example, in the two months prior to the Kuznetsov passage we are presently discussing, Russian
warships passed through the English Channel twice. One passage was on 8 September, and was mainly
covered by the British tabloids cited above. The other passage occurred less a month before the one on
8 September. The earlier passage was mentioned in the above articles, but it was not reported at all
when it happened.

These passages through the Channel are so routine that they are usually only reported by tabloids in the
UK. The UK broadsheets and the press in the rest of the world normally do not mention them at all. If
they did, they would be reporting on them all the time, and the propaganda value would be lost. Even in
the UK, most passages are not reported by anyone. The passage that occurred less than a month before
the 8 September one was only mentioned because the one on the 8th happened. If the passage on the
8th did not happen, nobody would have every heard about the one less than a month before it.

The News, a small outlet in Portsmouth, UK, also covered the 8 September passage. In that article, Ian
Millen, a defense expert (like Beaver), said:

"...despite some sensational newspaper headlines, these transits are almost certainly routine,
logistic voyages that are, unsurprisingly, taking the shortest route".

Here's another example: on 30 May 2017, Yahoo News93 had an article covering a Russian ship in the
Channel. Here is a quote from that article:

The incident - described as "routine business" for the navy - is the fourth94 such incident in the
past two months...

And here's a quote from a passage in 2015:

93
The Yahoo article cited Sky News in that case.
94
The first of the 4 incidents they are referring to is from 25 January 2017, when the Kuznetsov passed through the
Channel on its way back from Syria - the same trip we are currently discussing. 25 January to 30 May is longer than
two months, but this is the MSM we are covering.

101
 The MoD described the operation as "pretty routine" and a spokesman estimated that a Russian
warship was escorted through the Channel every few months.

Once again, the Royal Navy thinks that Russian ships in the Channel are "pretty routine".

They may be even more routine than the Royal Navy is admitting to. The Dutch Navy said that in 2016
they escorted 54 ships through their waters, almost all of which were Russian.95 That's about one a
week. The Netherlands is right at the entrance to the Channel. Unless all those Russian ships are going
right to the mouth of the Channel and then turning around, there are likely Russian ships in the Channel
multiple times per month.

To be fair, many of the comments above are referring at least partially to Russian ships passing through
the English Channel that are based in the Baltic Fleet. Whereas ships headed toward the Mediterranean
from the Arctic Circle have a realistic choice to go on the outside of the UK (route "A"), ships coming
from the Baltic Fleet have no other realistic choice. Let's look at a map to see this:

Ships coming from the Baltic Fleet ports are not going to go all the way around the UK to the north. Even
the Western MSM would not expect that.

Comments about Russian ships routinely passing through the Channel, however, are also made about
ships from the Northern Fleet. We saw this in the quotes above regarding the Kuznetsov, but the same
thing is said about other vessels from the Northern Fleet.

95
Text: "De Koninklijke Marine telde vorig jaar een recordaantal van 54 passages langs onze territoriale wateren
door oorlogsschepen uit landen die geen NAVO-lidstaat zijn. Volgens de Koninklijke Marine gaat het ’voor 99
procent om Russen’, maar er zijn ook al door Peking aangestuurde vlootverbanden gesignaleerd."

102
For example, here's a quote from the BBC from November 2014:

But the UK Royal Navy and the French Navy say "it's not unusual" to have Russian warships
transiting through the Channel. It's the route they often choose to make their way to the
Mediterranean.

This incident reported on by the BBC involved only ships from the Northern Fleet. Both the UK and
French Navies say that it is "not unusual" to have Russian ships from the Northern Fleet in the Channel.

More Russian ships from the Northern Fleet were in the Channel again 5 months later...

The evidence against Beaver continues to mount...

Previous Kuznetsov passages

As we have just seen, Russian ships, including those from the Northern Fleet, go through the Channel
constantly.

We have discussed the Kuznetsov passage through the Channel in November of 2016, and we also
briefly discussed the return trip in January of 2017. Let's look at previous trips to the Mediterranean by
the Kuznetsov and see what we learn.

The WaPo article says that the last time the Kuznetsov went to the Mediterranean was in 2014,96 so all
we have to do is look up that trip and read about how it took route "A", since Beaver said that is the
route the Russians "normally" take. I did look it up, and both on the way there and on the way back,
they took route "B".

Beaver says that the Kuznetsov "normally" takes route "A", but the last two times the Kuznetsov made
the trip, they took route "B". Isn't that strange?

Let's look at the media coverage of these voyages just for fun. Besides, we should confirm that I am
telling the truth about the Kuznetsov taking route "B".

Southern voyage
On 1 June 2013, the Commander of Russia's Navy announced that a naval group headed by the
Kuznetsov would head to the Mediterranean by the end of the year. The deployment was not a secret,
was announced 6 months ahead of time, and was reported at that time in the Western media as well.
The deployment was discussed again at the end of August. The voyage began on 17 December 2013,
which was announced once again in the Russian media.

96
"Built during the Soviet era and launched as the Leonid Brezhnev, the aircraft carrier has deployed to the
Mediterranean a total of five times during its 26 years in service, most recently in 2014."

103
As the ships approached the British Islands, they were hit by a storm, and they decided to anchor in
Moray Firth to ride out the storm before continuing their journey. Here is where Moray Firth is located:

(Notice how they anchored on the eastern side of the British islands, where there is protection from the
waves in the Atlantic Ocean? It's a good thing they didn't take route "A", where they would have found
themselves in the Atlantic Ocean during a storm).

On 22 December there was a report out of Portsmouth that the HMS Defender was sent to "shadow"
the Russian ships.

There are different versions of what happened next.

Here is what the UK Ministry of Defense said about the incident:

Destroyer Meets Russian Task Force Along UK Coastline

HMS Defender has returned to Portsmouth today after ensuring a number of Russian ships had
a safe passage along the UK coastline at short notice over Christmas...Due to bad weather the
Russian fleet anchored in the Moray Firth before heading down the East coast of the UK. As a
sign of the friendship between the two navies, good will messages were exchanged between the
ships on New Year’s Eve. The Minister for International Security Strategy, Dr Andrew Murrison,
said: “The UK and Russia enjoy a good relationship and the deployment of HMS Defender, one
of our newest destroyers, as Fleet Ready Escort underlines the Royal Navy’s modern day utility
in UK interests.”

Doesn't sound too scary. The Russian ships anchored due to bad weather, "good will messages" were
exchanged between the two countries that have a "good relationship", the weather cleared, and the
Russians left.

104
An article in the Aberdeen Press and Journal described the event similarly:

Sailors Exchange Hogmanay97 Messages with Russians

Royal Navy personnel exchanged Hogmanay messages with their Russian counterparts in the
Moray Firth last week. Defence chiefs revealed the friendly contact between former adversaries
yesterday as they confirmed that a Portsmouth-based Type 45 destroyer had completed her
mission shadowing a Russian navy taskforce off Scotland...

Friendly contact, similar to how the UK Ministry of Defense described it.

There were other versions of the story, however. Let's see how Scotland's Herald (the world's longest
running national newspaper), reported the incident98:

Russian Ship in Scottish Waters Sparks Tense Navy Stand-off

A tense military stand-off took place off Scotland days before Christmas when an armed Royal
Navy warship was sent to challenge a missile-carrying Russian vessel, it has emerged. The
Russian warship came within 30 miles of the north-east coast in what may have been a test of
the UK’s reduced naval -capacity following Ministry of Defence cutbacks...RAF reconnaissance
aircraft tracked the progress of the Russian warship as it neared ¬Scotland, and tension
increased when aerial photographs revealed it was carrying a full payload of guided
missiles...The Russian ship waited in the Moray Forth for the Glasgow-built Defender to arrive,
and while no shots were fired the 190-strong crew of the British ship remained at battle stations
throughout the confrontation. A defence source was reported as saying: “This was no exercise –
the Russian ship was behaving very aggressively in a stretch of water bordering Britain’s
¬territorial waters. They were watched very closely by the RAF and it was agreed that HMS
Defender should block the Russians’ passage. Defender was fully equipped with Sea Viper
surface-to-air missiles and guns capable of firing 40kg shells as far as 18 miles. Her captain and
crew knew this was the real deal and were prepared to engage.”...Russian expert Jonathan Eyal,
from the military think-tank the Royal United Services Institute, last night said Russia had
intended to intimidate Britain. He said: “The Russian fleet, which is growing in strength and
expanding its sphere of influence, wanted to show a presence in the North Sea and sail as close
as possible to the national sea boundary. The Russians knew exactly what they were doing. They
were saying, ‘We are back in business in the North Sea and we are powerful.’ They knew how far
they could sail before they would be required to withdraw.” He added: “The Russians may also
be inspecting nuclear installations in Scotland, with a view towards the independence
referendum. Certainly the Russians would see the country as more vulnerable if it were no
longer part of Britain."...

This paragraph is well beyond ridiculous. The UK government reported that because the UK and Russia
"enjoy a good relationship", their Navy "[ensured] a number of Russian ships had a safe passage" by

97
Hogmanay = New Year's Eve
98
The Daily Mail had a similar article

105
keeping them company through a storm, and the two countries exchanged "good will messages" during
the encounter. In The Herald, all this becomes a "tense Navy stand-off"!

Then, the Herald mentions Navy cutbacks. (This theme occurs99 very often in these Russian propaganda
stories. The stories are meant to scare people into supporting increases in military spending to protect
them from the evil commies.)

Next, Russians anchoring because of a storm becomes Russia "behaving very aggressively" with the
intent to "intimidate Britain" and to spy on Scotland's nuclear installations.

Insane.

Finally, they say that if the Scottish people vote "No" in their upcoming independence referendum,
Russia will view them as "more vulnerable". In addition to lobbying for defense spending increases, the
article is meant to influence the Scots in their upcoming independence vote100.

This was the best part:

After the confrontation between Defender and the Russian ship, which is believed to have
begun on December 20, the Russian military news agency Interfax-AVN released a statement
claiming the vessel was sheltering in the Moray Firth because of adverse weather conditions...
(emphasis added)

The story of the Russians anchoring because of a storm becomes a Russian "claim". The point of this
sentence is to say that the "storm" is just a pathetic Russian excuse when everyone knows the real
reason for their presence was to behave "very aggressively", to "intimidate Britain", and to spy on
Scotland's nuclear installations.

First of all, in addition to the UK government, other non-"Russian military" outlets reported the storm.
But reports are not really needed to prove that the storm really happened. Why?

Because The Herald is a Scottish newspaper!!.

The people living in Scotland had just experienced a series of major storms firsthand, but their
newspaper says that the storm was just a pathetic Russian excuse?!? Don't the people in Scotland
remember the storm that just fucking happened?

Let's read a story from The Independent from 30 December 2013 that explains the weather that was
occurring there at the time101:

99
See: "Angus Robertson, Moray MP and SNP defence spokesman, has now tabled a series of questions in
Westminster on the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) ability to respond to such incidents. He has used the latest
episode to reiterate his criticism of the 'utterly mad' scrapping of the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft fleet, which
had been based at former RAF Kinloss. In a new report published today, the defence select committee at
Westminster will also launch a fresh attack on the MoD over the lack of strategic thinking in its cuts programme."
Ross, Calum "SNP on Attack Over Russian Ship", 7 January 2014, Aberdeen Press and Journal
100
The Russians are not interfering in the elections, but the Western media is.

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 Power is Back On - Just in Time for More Storms

Another storm was set to hit western Britain today, bringing up to 6cm of rain and winds as high
as 80mph, forecasters warned. The Met Office issued severe weather warnings for much of
Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the southern coast and south-west of England. New
Year's Eve is expected to see a second band of rain pushing across the country from the west. An
amber alert, the second highest level, was issued for south-west Scotland for this morning
where widespread heavy rain was expected to start at about midnight...Heavy rain was also
expected to hit much of the west of the UK along with "locally severe gales" in parts of Wales
and south-west England. The new storm was arriving just as all the homes cut off from
electricity over the Christmas period were due to be finally reconnected. The final 130
properties were due to be restored last night. Recent storms resulted in about 75,000 homes
being disconnected and widespread travel disruption.

The people reading The Herald had just experienced a long period of storms with winds up to 80 mph,
which resulted in power loss and an "amber alert" being issued for Scotland. The Scottish people go
through all this, and then read that the Russian's excuse for anchoring because of some "storm" is just a
"claim" made by a Russian "military news agency", and should therefore not be believed. The real
reason the Russians were there was to "intimidate Britain" and to behave "very aggressively".

Don't believe your own senses, believe the newspaper!

Orwell would never have thought to put something this stupid in his book "1984" for fear of insulting his
readers. Now, nothing can insult the public. They're far too fucking stupid.

A month later, UK's Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, talked about the incident in UK's parliament.
Specifically, he addressed the nonsense propaganda articles like the one in The Herald. Here is what he
said:

The Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov passed through the UK’s area of interest, en route to the
Mediterranean, between 28 December 2013 and 10 January 2014. The carrier task group had
openly declared its planned deployment on social media sites. Its progress was monitored from
the point of its deployment from Russia, and it informed NATO before it commenced routine
flying operations.

Once it became apparent that the task group was indeed likely to enter the UK’s area of
interest, HMS Defender, as the fleet ready escort ship, was ordered to sail from Portsmouth to
meet and escort the group through the UK’s area of interest. This was several days before the
task group’s arrival to the north of Scotland. The Russian task group operated in international
waters off the coast of Scotland and followed international protocols to arrange their flying
exercises. Their contact with HMS Defender was highly professional and cordial throughout.

101
Milmo, Cahal, " Power is Back On - Just in Time for More Storms", The Independent, 30 Dec 2013, first edition,
page 6

107
 I am glad to be able to tell the House that the idea that we were caught unawares by this
deployment is entirely false, as is any suggestion that there was some kind of stand-off between
HMS Defender and the Russian vessels.

Hammond said that "the carrier task group had openly declared its planned deployment on social media
sites". It wasn't just on social media, it was in Russia's mainstream print media as well, over 6 months
before the voyage began. He also said that "its progress was monitored from the point of its deployment
from Russia". This was made easy by the Russians, since they told the world when they were leaving in
their media on the day that they left. The Russian's also told NATO directly before they ran their flight
exercises.

None of this is a secret!

Although the Russian's repeatedly told everyone in the world for 6 months exactly when and where they
would be, the Western media was convinced that their true purpose was to "testing the UK's reaction
times"102.

Jesus Christ.

Anyway, after the storm passed, the Russian ships continued their voyage.

Earlier, I said that the Kuznetsov took route "B" on this voyage, and therefore passed through the
Channel. But how do I know that? Even though they anchored in Moray Firth, once they left they could
have headed back north, went around the top of Scotland, and followed route "A". After all, none of the
articles I quoted about the Kuznetsov anchoring off Scotland said anything about them passing through
the Channel afterwards. If they did, surely those articles would have mentioned it, right?

If you look again at the article I already cited from the UK Ministry of Defense, however, they say this:

Due to bad weather, the Russian fleet anchored in the Moray Firth before heading down the
east coast of the UK.

Heading down the east coast is definitely route "B", not route "A".

The only other thing the Ministry of Defense mentions is that the Defender had returned home the day
the article appeared, which was 9 January 2014. They even included this picture of the Defender
returning to its home port of Portsmouth:

102
Ross, Callum, "Russia's Largest Warship Makes Pit Stop Off Scotland", Aberdeen Press and Journal, 8 January
2014. p.4

108
This is where Portsmouth is located:

Here's what we know:

1)The Defender and the Kuznetsov were both in Moray Firth on New Year's Eve.

2)The Kuznetsov travelled down the east side of the UK.

109
3)The Defender arrived back in its home port of Portsmouth on 9 January.

Presumably, the Defender also travelled down the east coast in order to get back to its home port. Since
the Kuznetsov and the Defender were both travelling down the east coast of the UK, they likely travelled
together. Sound plausible? One of the duties of the Defender, after all, is to escort foreign ships passing
through their waters. The Defender also had to pass through most of the English Channel, since its home
port of Portsmouth is on the western side of the Channel. Since both ships also went through the English
Channel, they likely also did that together? Isn't it at least plausible?

So I searched the internet and Lexis Nexis, but initially I couldn't find anything about the Kuznetsov
passing through the Channel at that time. Eventually, I did find one article on the web from 12 January
2014 that said the Kuznetsov passed through the English Channel. Here is the headline:

I had never heard of this website, and at first wondered if it was even credible. How could such a
momentous occasion be covered only by the "Strategic Bureau of Information on Defense Systems"?
After all, when the exact same thing happened in 2016, every single MSM outlet on the planet went
absolutely batshit crazy. What is going on?

Then, I started searching the web in Russian103, and found this two and a half minute video from Zvedza
news of the Kuznetsov sailing through the Channel! It is daytime, there are ferries and sailboats passing
by, and at 1:56 you see the HMS Defender sailing right alongside:

103
I don't know Russian, but all you need to do is use Google translate and search "Кузнецов" instead of
"Kuznetsov" and either " Английский канал" or "Ла-Манш " instead of "English Channel" and then use Google
translate again on your hits.

110
The same news outlet also had an article about the passage through the Channel.

The Kuznetsov passed through the Channel on 9 January 2014 with the HMS Defender. Once they got
through the Channel, the Defender went home to Portsmouth, and the Kuznetsov continued on towards
the Mediterranean.

The Western media went batshit crazy about the Russian ships anchoring off Scotland, but when they
passed through the English Channel, not a single Western news outlet in the entire world said a single
fucking word about it. When the Kuznetsov passed through the Channel again 4 months later (on the
trip home), MSM outlets mentioned that the Kuznetsov was in the Channel 4 months prior, but they
didn't even know when it happened.104

104
As we will see below, the Kuznetsov passed through the Channel again in May of 2014. It was returning home
from the Med, so it was coming through in the opposite direction. In the newspaper articles that came out at the
time, they mentioned that the Kuznetsov had naval escorts when it was going south to the Mediterranean several
months prior (this was the passage that was not covered by the MSM). When they mention this escort, however,
they say that it happened in December 2013. For example: "Naval sources said it was not unusual for Russian
warships to pass through the channel and the Kuznetsov was also escorted past British waters on its way out in
December when it passed Scotland heading south." Also: "...it is not unusual for Russian warships to pass through
the Channel - the same group went through in the opposite direction in December." As we discussed above,
December 2013 is the month when the UK Navy anchored in Moray Firth with the Kuznetsov, which was discussed
in the media. This is the escort the MSM was referring to above. The Kuznetsov passed through the Channel in
January, not in December. When the Kuznetsov passed through the Channel on 9 January 2014, it was not in the
news.

111
Northern Voyage

Four months later, the Kuznetsov was passing through the Channel again, this time in the opposite
direction. It was heading back home to its base in the Northern Fleet from the Mediterranean. This time,
the passage was covered in the media, but not nearly to the extent as in the 2016 passage, and without
nearly as much nonsense.

Here is the title of an article about this passage from an article by the Royal Navy:

Royal Navy Sails to Meet Russian Task Group

In 2014, the UK Navy "meets" the Kuznetsov. When the same event happens a couple years later, the UK
Navy is "intercepting" the Kuznetsov.

This is from the UK Navy article:

In another example of routine work for the Fleet Ready Escort, HMS Dragon tracked and met up
with a Russian task group off the coast of Brest as they entered the English Channel on
Wednesday to sail north... Once the ships spotted each other they briefly sailed close by as a
standard ‘meet and greet’... Captain Rex Cox, Commanding Officer of HMS Dragon said:
“Following our recent activation HMS Dragon has once more monitored a Russian task group
through the UK’s areas of interest. This is very much routine business both for HMS Dragon and
for the Royal Navy. What is different here is that a Russian task group of this size has not passed
by our shores in some time." (emphasis added)

The UK Navy said that they "met" the Russian ship in an incident that is "very much routine business".

In this headline from the National Post (the story is from AP), they say that the UK's Ministry of Defense
"repeatedly stressed it was a routine matter":

Even the articles from the 2014 incident that contained obvious propaganda still included important,
relevant information. For example, there is this article from the Daily Mail. Before discussing the

112
propaganda in this article, let's read about some details that were not included in the article from the
UK Navy:

It is not unusual for Russian warships to pass through the Channel - the same group went
through in the opposite direction in December. The Voice of Russia website - which often carries
details of Russian naval movements - reported last month that they were due to
return...Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the deployment of HMS Dragon was part of a
pre-planned operation. 'The decision was taken about 10 days ago when we first knew of the
Kuznetsov's planned route. These movements are pre-planned. We are notified of them in
advance,' he said. He said that HMS Dragon had taken over from a French destroyer which
tracked the Russian flotilla through the Bay of Biscay and would hand over to a Norwegian
warship. (emphasis added)

Russian media announced that Kuznetsov would be returning to the North Sea a month before it

notified the UK directly

happened. In addition, as the voyage was taking place, Russia

10 days before they were going to be in the Channel, and told

them what their route would be. These ship movements are "pre-planned", and other countries are
informed of them.

There is nothing secret about them!

The story also mentions that the UK took over the escorting duty from a French ship, then handed the
task to a Norwegian ship when they were done. Each nation sequentially escorts the ship through their
waters as the ship passes by. Once again, escorts happen all the fucking time.

Let's recap what we've learned. The article from the UK Navy quoted Rex Cox, Captain of the UK escort
ship, saying that "this is very much routine business", and Mark Francois, Minister of the UK Armed
Forces, described the escort as a "routine action". The article also describes how the escort and the
Russian carrier "briefly sailed close by for a standard 'meet and greet'". The Daily Mail article had the
same quotes from Cox and Francois, and they also included a quote from Defence Secretary Philip
Hammond saying that Russia informed the UK of the passage 10 days in advance. With all that in mind,
let's now read the title of the Daily Mail article:

The Bear in our Backyard: Return of the Cold War as Royal Navy Confronts Russian Aircraft
Carrier Group in the English Channel for the First Time in Years

Even though the article contains some useful information, the title always contains the most amount of
crap. The MSM knows that most people (especially Americans) only read titles, because most Americans
have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. In the title of the Daily Mail article, a routine, friendly
"meet and greet" that was planned 10 days in advance becomes a "confrontation" that marks the
beginning of a new Cold War.

113
In addition, the title of the Daily Mail article from 8 May 2014 says that it was "the first time in years"
that the Kuznetsov was in the English Channel. The truth is that the Kusnetsov was in the Channel on 9
January 2014. That's less than 4 months.

It's fucking obnoxious.

Summary

Let's summarize the three consecutive times the Kuznetsov passed through the Channel that we have
discussed. In all three of these voyages, the Kuznetsov took the same route (in one direction or the
other), which is route "B".

9 January 2014 passage through Channel: The Russians advertised the trip publically months in advance,
notified NATO of the trip in advance, exchanged "good will messages" in Moray Firth, and acted "highly
professional and cordial" at all times. Nobody anywhere commented that taking route "B" was in any
way strange. In fact, when the Kuznetsov passed through the English Channel on 9 January 2014, not a
single MSM source even reported it. It was that much of a non-event.

8 May 2014:

As with the previous passage through the Channel, Russia advertised it a month in advance, and told the
UK about their exact itinerary 10 days in advance. The article from the UK Navy quoted Rex Cox, Captain
of the UK escort ship, saying that "this is very much routine business", and Mark Francois, Minister of
the UK Armed Forces, described the escort as a "routine action". Once again. nobody anywhere
commented that taking route "B" was in any way strange.

October 2016

In the Washington Post, Beaver said that taking route "B" through the English Channel constituted a
"huge [amount] of theater" and was a "power play", and Spithead said that taking route "B" was an
example of Russia "posturing".

Let's put this in an even simpler form for Americans:

When you are writing propaganda story for a particular event, you just write whatever pops into your
head at the moment. Nobody thought of the idea that route "B" could be portrayed as "evil" until the

114
October 2016 Channel passage, so they went with it then. If someone had thought of that in May of
2014, it easily could have been the subject at that time. You just make shit up as it happens. If they had
thought of this in 2014, Beaver would have made his bullshit comment then. He doesn't give a shit. He's
just a propagandist shilling for more wars.

(As for the passage through the Channel in January of 2014 not being covered at all, it was likely because
the MSM was already in full blown panic mode over the issue of homosexuals during the Sochi
Olympics, so they already had plenty to deal with as far as anti-Russia propaganda. The Kuznetsov story
was not needed at the time).

The next-previous passage

To find the next most recent trip by the Kuznetsov to the Mediterranean, way have to go back a few
more years. In that trip, the Kuznetsov passed the UK on the way south in December of 2011, and
returned in February of 2012105.

In this case, the Kuznetsov actually took route "A" around the UK!

So when Beaver said the Russian's "normally" take route "A", he was talking about 5 years ago, and
ignoring the more recent two passages. Selective memory.

The critical question is: Why did the Kuznetsov take route "A" back then?

The Beaver/WaPo answer would be something like this:

There's huge amounts of theater here. Normally, the Russians take route "A" because it is faster
than route "B". This time, they decided to take slower route "B" anyway, for a couple reasons.
One is that they are sending a message to NATO that says "we are back" and that "anything you
do, we can do as well". It's very much a power play. Also, it is an intentional snub towards
Britain, who has been one of Russia's biggest critics over the war in Syria.

This is all nonsense. First of all, we showed that route "B" is several days faster than route "A", which is
the exact opposite of what Beaver and WaPo say.

Knowing this, the next logical question is: If route "B" is faster, why did the Kuznetsov ever take route
"A"?

There are two reasons: one is a mechanical and one is navigational. Both of these are safety related.

Let's first talk about the mechanical reason. As the Western MSM was so eager to point out in 2016, the
Kuznetsov has issues with its engines. They do not have enough power and are unreliable. In 2009, a

105
As in every other case, Russia announced the trip in advance in their media. (On the trip south, the propaganda
subject was about the Kuznetsov dumping waste in the waters off Britain. A Royal Navy spokesman, however, said
the charge was nonsense: "Russia is signed up to the International Maritime Organisation's maritime pollution
rules, of which they are very strict followers...If they are [dumping waste], it's almost certainly in accordance with
the regulations and is most likely going to be low-level food waste."

115
former chief of the Russian Navy's Main Staff told the following story about the Kuznetsov, which
illustrates what can happen as a result106:

In 1996, the Navy was in terrible condition. But it was necessary to celebrate its 300th
anniversary. It was decided to carry out a cruise on the Kuznetsov to the Mediterranean Sea. I
remember just like it was now. We were sitting in the reception room of Malta's defence
minister. A communications officer reported: 'The wind is increasing to 30 m/sec. Not one boiler
is functioning on the Kuznetsov.' The ship's sail area is enormous. It was being dragged onto the
cliffs. I already had a feeling this would be the greatest shame in history. Russia's largest ship
laying on Malta's cliffs in the jubilee year. According to the flight rules, landing on the deck in
such a wind is prohibited, but the helicopter pilots landed me on the Kuznetsov. Swearing and
praying, we worked on the boilers. As a result, one of them started up. Thank God and the
sailors of Combat Unit 5. A disaster did not take place...

If something were to happen to the Kuznetsov's engines while it was in the English Channel, it could
easily end up washed up on the shore. This would be very costly and embarrassing for them.

I'll illustrate the second, navigational reason by showing the same picture I already showed above of the
typical traffic in the English Channel:

The English Channel is the most crowded sea lane in the world. Sailing any boat through it is very
difficult and nerve-wracking. It is even more difficult when the ship you are piloting is over 1,000 feet
long, and your engines are underpowered.

106
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, 25 January 2009, from Russian Newspaper Trud, 23 January 2009, titled
"The 'Neustrashimyy' Limped into Gibraltar; the Admirals Claim that this was Considered", by Mikhail Lukanin and
Sergey Ischenko

116
So it it's a balancing act. Route "A" is dangerous because it is in the open ocean, and route "B" is
dangerous because of the dangers of navigating the Channel in a large boat, especially when that boat
has underpowered and unreliable engines. A long time ago, the engine issues were too significant,
which necessitated taking route "A". Over time, however, the engines were updated and made more
reliable. In addition. the crews, including the commanding officer, were gaining years of experience.
Eventually, these improvements made sailing through the Channel safer than sailing in the open ocean,
and saved time as well. (The same natural development happened with the Pyotr Veliky, which is also a
large ship. It's more powerful and reliable propulsion system allowed it to navigate the Channel long
before the Kuznetsov - in April of 2010).

For these reasons, the Russians decided to send the Kuznetsov through the English Channel in 2014 for
the first time. The Strategic Bureau article I already quoted talks about some of the reasons for the new
route:

This new itinerary [route "B"], has permitted to shave off several days of travel and to confirm
its ability to maneuver within a passage that is particularly thick with maritime traffic.

The MSM, however, did not say a single word about the Kuznetsov being in the English Channel for the
first time. It did not occur to them at that time what a propaganda moment they were missing.
Sometime afterwards, someone thought, "we should have said something about how evil it is for the
Russians to send a boat through the English Channel! We missed our chance!"

But they didn't miss their propaganda moment, it was just delayed. The next time the Kuznetsov went
through the Channel, the MSM went with their propaganda nonsense about how the evil Russian sent
their big smoky boat through the Channel, and everyone lapped it up.

Vikramaditya

Russia sold India an aircraft carrier that looks very similar to the Kuznetsov. India took possession of the
ship in Murmansk, which is the home of Russia's Northern Fleet. From there, India sailed the boat to
their country. India, then, was faced with the same dilemma as the Russians: do we take route A, or
route B? Guess which route they took?

Route. fucking. B.
When India passed through the Channel, however, Beaver was not in the news telling people that India
sailing the Vikramaditya through the Channel involved a "huge amount of theater" and was a "power
play". In that case, India was just taking the quickest, safest route. See the difference?

The Royal Navy "intercepted" the Kuznetsov when it went through the Channel, but when the
Vikramaditya went through the Channel, the Royal Navy "helped" them.

Maybe you'll understand the difference when you see the ships:

117
Propaganda

Let's look again at the chart I made above that summarizes the media comments regarding the
Kuznetsov taking route "B":

The most ridiculous lies come from Beaver/The Washington Post, and the truth can be found in sources
like the Economist (and the Russian media, of course). As is always the case, the amount of bullshit in
each source is inversely proportional to the readership that that source receives. The Washington Post is
by far the most read source above107, especially for Americans. As a result, they tell the most outrageous
lies. The Economist, shockingly, tells the truth, but nobody reads the Economist. Tens of millions of
people read the nonsense Beaver quote in WaPo, and 10 people read the truth in the Economist.
Standard propaganda practice.

More nonsense.
Let's talk about another nonsense story about this Kuznetsov passage through the Channel. In the Daily
Mail article on 21 October 2016, they include this picture/caption:

107
Either directly, or through indirect sources such as Google/Yahoo News

118
They claim the Stary Oskol was with the Kuznetsov on this passage south through the Channel.

Really?

As we mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the Stary Oskol passed through the English Channel on
7 June 2016, and was headed for the Black Sea. It arrived in the Black Sea, its home base, on 29 June
2016. The Daily Mail is claiming that a few months after arriving at its home base, it went all the way
back to Murmansk, the home of the Northern Fleet, just so it could accompany the Kuznetsov on its trip
to the Mediterranean. Are you fucking kidding? This is about 5,800 miles one way108, or over 11,000
miles round trip. They did that just to keep the Kuznestov company?

This is a lie.

Maybe you're thinking, "but they have a picture of the sub in the Channel - you just showed it! Are you
blind?!". The Daily Mail also showed a picture of the Stary Oskol passing through the Channel on 7 June
2016, which is an event that happened in real life. Let's compare that picture from 7 June to the one
they took on 21 October:

108
I measured using skyvector.

119
Those pictures look awfully similar, don't they? The Daily Mail took their picture from the submarine
passage that happened 4 months previously, reprinted it, and claimed that the sub was there again
along with the Kuznetsov.

Liars.

Then the Daily Mail prints this picture/caption in the same article:

120
Jesus Christ. Can you tell that this sub is not the Stary Oskol? I'll put the pictures side-by-side for you:

Can you see the difference? They put pictures of two different submarines in one article, and claim that
they are both the Stary Oskol! The sub on the left is a Delta IV class nuclear submarine. Specifically, it is
the Novomoskovsk. How do I know the exact sub it is? Well, three days before the Daily Mail article was
published, Joseph Dempsey of the IISS tweeted this:

Recognize the picture?

121
A Norwegian military surveillance plane took the picture109 of the Novomoskovsk that the Daily Mail
used in their article. The picture was taken in the Barents Sea, specifically, here:

The picture was taken on 12 October110, 9 days before the Kuznetsov was in the English Channel.

The sub was not the Stary Oskol and it was not anywhere near the Kuznetsov or the English Channel.

Here, then, is what happened. As the Kuznetsov was passing through the Channel, the Daily Mail
decided that questioning the route like Beaver did was not an exciting enough propaganda angle, and
they wanted to spice it up a little. They decided that having a submarine travelling with the Kuznetsov
might be a fun thing to say. Submarines are scary, after all. So the Daily Mail pretended like a submarine
was present. Specifically, they chose the Stary Oskol. To prove that the Stary Oskol was there, they
showed two pictures of it. One was an actual photo of the Stary Oskol in the Channel, but it was a 4
month old photo. The other picture was of a different sub entirely, the Novomoskovsk, which was taken
9 days before the Kuznetsov was in the Channel, and very far away from it.

At the moment the Kuznetsov was in the Channel, the Novomoskovsk was over 2,000 miles away in the
Barents Sea, and the Stary Oskol was nearly 6,000 miles away in the Black Sea.111

These lies were not outrageous enough, so they added this:

The Admiral Kuznetsov is protected by a battle cruiser and a pair of large anti-submarine ships.
It is also protected from below the surface by an attack submarine.

109
Dempsey points out where the picture came from. The Norwegian military almost certainly tweeted the picture
originally, but I can't find it.
110
On 18 October, the Barents Observer, had an article, which included the same picture of the Novomoskovsk we
are talking about, saying it was taken "last Wednesday", which was the 12th. Also, various blogs and news reports
of the drills noted the date was the 12th.
111
Both distances are distances by sea, not straight lines.

122
It's so fucking insane. There were zero submarines in the Channel with the Kuznetsov. There were

zero submarines on the surface, and zero submarines below the surface, for a total of zero
submarines.

The media just fabricates whatever the hell they want to, and they back up their lies by showing random
pictures that aren't even necessarily of the object they are talking about. It is surreal. They know that
the can be nonchalant with their lies. Why bother to fabricate sophisticated propaganda when the
public is so unbelievably stupid?

Russian sub in the Irish Sea

OK. One more nonsense Russian sub story and I'll be done.

In April of 2015, a fishing boat in the Irish Sea was dragged through the water when a submarine got
caught in its fishing nets. The media in the UK went batshit crazy. They decided that it could not possibly
have been an British submarine for 2 reasons. One was that is an incident like this happens, Royal Navy
protocol requires the submarine to immediately surface to make sure the people involved are OK. The
other reason was that the British Navy said that it was not them. They also had a military "expert" who
said that, because the British Navy "[speaks] on behalf of NATO which are our Allies", and because the
Royal Navy "[co-ordinates] Nato submarines in British territorial waters", it could not have been a NATO
submarine, either. So whose sub was it? The "expert" tells us: "if it wasn't British and it wasn't American,
look to the east". Of course. It was Russia. Isn't it always Russia? All the articles cited above come to the
same conclusion. It was the evil Russians.

Let's look how the Russian media reported the same story. They immediately bring up how the Western
media "rushed to judgment" by blaming the Russians. If you have any shred of objectivity, you would
realize this is true. The Russian article, however, does something that is unheard of in Western media.
They discuss facts. To gain insights on what may have happened, they look at the history of
submarine/boat incidents in the Irish Sea. Seems reasonable. As it turns out, there is a long history of
incidents involving NATO ships and civilian vessels in the Irish Sea. They wonder if the current incident is
simply another example of this.

The Western media points at Russia without presenting anything at all in the way of evidence, facts, or
history. At least the Russian media discusses real life events. In addition, the Russian article says that "it
very well could have been a Russian submarine", and after presenting their case, they also say this:

None of this is to assign blame or to claim that it wasn't a Russian sub which dragged the Karen
and shook her crew members last week. It very well could have been — but that theory is no
more or less likely than the theory that says it was a British one.

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The Russian media is fair. They bring up reasons why it could have been a NATO sub, but in the end say
that there is no evidence either way. Nobody knows. This is very, very different than the Western
articles, who are more or less completely convinced that the sub was Russian.

Read all the articles and judge for yourself whose media is more truthful.

By the way, 5 months later the British Navy announced that the sub was British. Even
though they denied that it was a British sub even two months after the incident occurred, eventually
"new information" became available which confirmed that the sub was British.

Why did it takes months for the Royal Navy to realize that the sub was theirs? Does that make sense to
you?

The end

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Appendix:

(Copy of the "Strategic Bureau" article. This is the only news report of the first passage of the Kuznetsov
through the English Channel that occurred anywhere in the world, so I saved a copy in case it disappears
from the web)

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