All news

Russian sailors defuse WWII munitions along route of Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline laying

The operation went off successfully and the explosive objects were destroyed, Fleet spokesman Roman Martov said

KALININGRAD, November 24. /TASS/. The Russian Baltic Fleet sailors have defused four powerful WWII munitions in the Gulf of Finland along the route of laying the Nord Stream-2 export gas pipeline, Fleet spokesman Roman Martov said on Friday.

"A remote control unmanned submersible helped detect four naval munitions at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland -two floating mines, an electromagnetic mine and a torpedo of German make dating to the period of the Great Patriotic War [of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in 1941-1945] and lying at a depth of 30-40 meters close to each other," the spokesman said.

The information about the explosive objects came from a specialized organization dealing with the remote control magnetometric and sonar survey of the seabed.

The Baltic Fleet dispatched the small anti-submarine warfare ship Zelenodolsk with a group of naval divers and specialized equipment to defuse the munitions.

The specialists who surveyed the hazardous finds came to the conclusion that it would be dangerous to lift the mines and the torpedo to the surface, after which they decided to destroy them on the scene by their detonation.

"The operation went off successfully and the explosive objects were destroyed," Martov said.

The Nord Stream-2 project worth almost 10 billion euros envisages building two stretches of the export gas pipeline with a total annual capacity of 55 billion cubic meters from Russia’s Baltic coast to Germany.