New OSINT: Russian Navy Beluga whale program moves in to GUGI submarine base
Since the Russian Navy Beluga whale program came into focus in late April 2019, new commercial satellite imagery has come to light which shows that at around the same time, the Russian Navy had moved some Beluga whales to its secretive Olenya Guba (Deer Bay - Оленья Губа) base.
The Olenya Guba base houses the special mission submarines of the 29th Separate Brigade of submarines of the Northern Fleet which support GUGI (Main Directorate Deep Sea Research). The 29th Separate Brigade operate a range of Special Mission submarines (read ‘Spy submarines’), including the massive host submarines BS-64 Podmoskovye and BS-136 * Orenburg, as well as the deep diving nuclear powered midget submarines which they carry (Losharik, UNIFORM, X-RAY, PLATUS), and the enigmatic ‘research ship’ Yantar*.
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This expands to three the known Marine mammal sites related to the program. Tonya Bay and Sadya Bay, both nearby, have both already been identified from satellite imagery and geo-location of Russian image sources. Notably the pens seen at Olenya Guba relate to Beluga Whales only; there are no seal pens.
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