Moscow Wants Sweden to Start Treating Security in Baltic Sea Realistically

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia hopes that Swedish authorities will start treating the security situation in the Baltic Sea in a more realistic manner and engage in constructive dialogue in the sphere, Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.

The ministry’s statement came after Swedish media reported Saturday citing Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad that the alleged Russian submarine Swedish Navy was searching for in October 2014 was in fact a “working boat.”

“We would like to hope that Swedish military and civil authorities will be accessing the security situation in the Baltic Sea region in a more sober manner and that they will turn to constructive dialogue to strengthen it [the security],” Russian Foreign Ministry said adding that the representatives of Russian Armed Forces denied all the insinuations by the Swedish side regarding the alleged presence of Russian Navy’s vessels in the territorial waters of Sweden from the very beginning.

Russian Foreign Ministry noted that “the unprecedented scale” of the hunt Sweden launched in search for the “Russian submarine” turned out to be nothing more that the waste of taxpayers' money.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry, the whole story was aimed at “promoting anti-Russia hysteria and ‘pumping up’ the myth on ‘military threat’ from East.”

The hunt for the alleged Russian submarine started in October 2014 after Swedish Ministry of Defense received a photo of an unidentified vessel taken by a local citizen who claimed that he saw it go under water. The Defense Ministry conducted a one-week search for the mystery boat involving as many as 200 troops and dozens of units of military equipment.