Russia denies submarine incident off Sweden

The Russian defence ministry has denied reports that one of its submarines got into trouble off Sweden, sparking a military alert in the Baltic.

The Swedish military, which has been searching the sea since Friday, has not given details but a local newspaper says a distress signal was intercepted.

Unnamed sources told Svenska Dagbladet it was a radio transmission in Russian.

Soviet submarine sightings caused security alerts in Sweden, which is not a member of Nato, in the 1980s.

Russia's military intervention in Ukraine this year has fuelled suspicion about its intentions towards other neighbouring states, notably in the Baltic.

It has several submarines based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania and facing out to Sweden, as well as a much bigger force near Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula.

Last month, another Swedish newspaper, Expressen, reported an incursion by two Russian SU-24 fighter bombers into national airspace. Sweden scrambled jets to see them off, it said.

A defence ministry spokesman in Moscow told reporters that the Russian navy's submarines and surface ships were 'performing tasks... according to plan'.

'There has been no irregular situation, let alone emergency situation, involving Russian navy vessels,' he said.

Svenska Dagbladet's sources said Sweden had begun a search after a radio transmission in Russian was detected on an emergency frequency on Thursday evening.

Encrypted radio traffic from a point in the Stockholm archipelago and Kaliningrad was later also picked up.

A corvette equipped with anti-submarine technology, the Visby, joined other vessels, as well as helicopters and amphibious troops, in scanning the search area.

Officials denied they were 'submarine hunting', saying instead that it was an 'intelligence operation', AFP news agency reports.

'The Swedish Armed Forces are not in a position to deny or verify media news or speculations recently published about a missing foreign submarine,' Swedish defence spokesman Erik Lagersten said.

In 1981, a Soviet submarine ran aground near a Swedish naval base.

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