Norwegian authorities said Tuesday that a beluga whale, which was first spotted in Arctic Norway four years ago with an apparent Russian-made harness and alleged to have come from a Russian military facility, has been seen off Sweden’s coast nearly 2,000 kilometers (around 1,250 miles) to the south.
“During the last few weeks, it has moved quickly and swam several hundred kilometers” before reaching waters off Sweden’s west coast, Olav Lekve of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said.
Last week, the white mammal was spotted in the inner Oslo fjord where the directorate urged people to avoid contact with the animal to ensure its safety and wellbeing. Whale watchers in Norway have nicknamed it Hvaldimir, combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the Russian first name Vladimir.
“We have not received any reports from the inner Oslo fjord that give cause for concern,” Lekve said in an email to The Associated Press.“He is a little lonely whale who hopes to find other white whales that he can hang out with,” said Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with Onewhale, a nonprofit organization created solely for protecting the health and welfare of Hvaldimir.
Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former foreign minister, jokingly suggested to TV4 that Hvaldimir should be granted political asylum in Sweden, saying “it is possible that it is a refugee protesting against Putin’s war” in Ukraine.
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