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Satellite images, released by the US Naval Institute, show two dolphin pens in the Sevastopol harbour. The pens are believed to have been moved to the naval base just before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Russia has used dolphins for military operations since its Soviet Union days.
The aquatic mammals are used by the military to retrieve objects or deter enemy divers.
The Sevastopol naval base, which sits in the southern area of Crimea, is crucial for Moscow’s military.
Putin’s Black Sea fleet is housed in the harbour, along with its flagship Moskva ship before it sank.
Ukraine’s military also has a history of training dolphins at an aquarium near the harbour.
However, the Soviet-era scheme fell into neglect in the 1990s but was then resurrected in 2012.
Russia’s invasion of Crimea then meant the mammals fell into the control of the Russian military.
Ukraine’s requests for Russia to return the mammals were denied, with Moscow planning to expand the scheme.
The US also uses the mammals, and established its Marine Mammal Programme in 1959 after dolphins were found to be skilled at delivering messages and identifying naval threats.
Its military is thought to have spent as much as $28million maintaining its own fleet of military dolphins and sea lions.
Dolphins, however, are not the most reliable of troops as two-thirds of Russia’s military dolphins went missing in 2013 – reportedly in search of love.
However, the recent satellite images show that Russia appears to be using them again in the conflict with Ukraine.
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Ukrainian missiles reportedly do not have the range to reach targets stationed at the Sevastopol harbour, where the mammals are based, but Kyiv could possibly send underwater saboteurs to break into the base.
The dolphins, based at the entrance of the naval base, could detect the divers.
One source told Russian news agency RIA Novosti: “Our specialists developed new devices that convert dolphins’ underwater sonar detection of targets into a signal to the operator’s monitor.
“The Ukrainian navy lacked funds for such know-how, and some projects had to be mothballed.”
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