"Ghost ships" allegedly belonging to NATO countries appeared in the Baltic Sea, although they were in fact located elsewhere, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat said citing the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom).
Thousands of Phantom Signals Detected
According to the report, on Monday, November 3, thousands of signals from military ships were recorded in the Baltic Sea. In reality, most of those vessels were far from its shores. For instance, an Spanish warship was detected in the Gulf of Finland, though data showed it was actually traveling from Somalia to Japan.
Experts suggested that the error likely originated at an identification signal receiver (AIS) station in Parainen, Finland. The receiver usually collects data only from ships located in the Archipelago Sea, a part of the Baltic between the Bothnian and Finnish Gulfs. Typically, the station handles fewer than a hundred ships per hour, yet on Sunday evening it reportedly connected with nearly 18,000.
Helsingin Sanomat noted that the receiver in Parainen is privately operated, and the issue concerns only commercial tracking systems. There were no failures in government-controlled systems that process data from military vessels, confirmed Aleksi Uttula, head of the maritime surveillance department at Traficom.
Rising NATO Reconnaissance Near Russia’s Borders
Meanwhile, Russian officials have reported growing NATO intelligence activity near the country’s borders in the Baltic and Black Seas. Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, stated that the alliance “continues to build up its military potential along our borders” and that “reconnaissance near our maritime and air frontiers in the Baltic and Black Seas has intensified.”
According to Vorontsov, the longer presence of NATO warships in the Black Sea and the expansion of battalion and brigade-level formations in Baltic and Black Sea countries demonstrate this escalation.
NATO Exercises and the Kaliningrad Scenario
Earlier, NATO was accused of rehearsing a blockade of Russia’s Kaliningrad region during its Neptune Strike naval exercises in the Baltic Sea. Military expert Vasily Dandykin said the drills involved practicing pressure scenarios against Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad, where major Russian naval bases and shipbuilding centers are located.
“The alliance is working out various scenarios during its exercises, including the isolation of Kaliningrad,”
confirmed Alexander Grushko, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister. In turn, Andrei Kolesnik, a member of the State Duma’s Defense Committee, warned that any NATO attempt to block Kaliningrad “would lead to a third world war.”
