STOCKHOLM, October 21 (RIA Novosti) - Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces Sverker Goranson rejected media reports on Tuesday that the ongoing submarine search in the Stockholm archipelago was triggered by the finding of a Russian radio transmitter.
"As far as I am aware, this is incorrect. We have collided with a military vessel, but it was a buoy," Goranson told reporters.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Swedish Aftonbladet newspaper reported that the military operation off the Swedish coast began when a Swedish navy ship collided with a radio transmitter from a Russian submarine.
Answering Aftonbladet's question of whether the Swedish forces have run into a foreign watercraft, Goranson stated that he would "not go into detail on what we have found or reports we have received. For operational security reasons, we need to keep things to ourselves".
Swedish forces first launched a major operation off the coast of Stockholm on Friday after receiving information, reportedly from a civilian, about the presence of an unknown underwater object in the region, suspected to be a foreign submarine.