Swimmers in the Black Sea can be at ease as it turns out the report of three Ukrainian military trained killer dolphins escaping their handlers in the Crimea earlier this week was a hoax.
On Tuesday, Russia's RIA Novosti reported that a pod of dangerous dolphins escaped from the Sevastopol Aquarium into the Black Sea on Feb. 24 during a training exercise in search for mates. The dolphins were allegedly part of a navy run program that goes back to the days of the Soviet Union when the program was maintained to "attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads", Foreign Policy reports.
"We are now planning training exercises for counter-combat swimmer tasks in order to defend ships in port and on raids," an unidentified source told RIA Novosti, adding that the dolphins were also trained to find sea mines and to plant bombs on enemy ships.
The story was first reported in a Ukrainian media outlet but was denied by Ukrainian Defense Ministry officials who said the story was "absolutely fabricated", ABC News reports. A Russian news report has also uncovered that files used for the original story were forged.
It's believed the Ukrainian dolphin training program is fairly extensive. The Atlantic reported that according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists there are 70 trained dolphins that the Ukraine inherited from the Soviet military. Many were trained to help with child therapy and other civilian missions.