Hvaldimir, beluga whale suspected of being Russian spy, could be shot — ecologists

LONDON, September 4. /TASS/. A beluga whale nicknamed Hvaldimir found dead off the Norwegian coast last week may have been shot by poachers, the NRK broadcaster reported.
On Wednesday morning, the Noah and One Whale organizations submitted a statement to the Norwegian police demanding an investigation into the circumstances of the whale’s death.
“We have received the statement. Now an autopsy will be performed on Hvaldimir. It will take some time and then we will decide if further action is necessary,” a police spokesman told the broadcaster, commenting on reports that the beluga whale’s fatal injuries looked like gunshot wounds.
The dead beluga whale was discovered in the sea near the city of Stavanger in western Norway on August 31. Its body was pulled from the water and taken to a veterinary institute for an autopsy.
In the spring of 2019, fishermen in northern Norway came across a beluga whale wearing a harness with a logo of a company with a legal address in St. Petersburg and a video camera attached to it. The whale was curious about humans and clearly enjoyed interacting with them, which gave rise to a theory picked up by the Norwegian media that the beluga whale had allegedly been tamed and used by Russian intelligence to gather information. The whale was nicknamed Hvaldimir (from the Norwegian word “hval”, meaning “whale”, and the Russian name Vladimir). Over the next five years, the whale, which became something of a landmark, repeatedly came into contact with fishermen and tourists off the Norwegian coast.