When he came across the rescue vessel, Fransson noticed that it was acting strangely. While it came from the Swedish border and had registered Las Palmas as its destination in the electronic vessel traffic service AIS, the ship was nevertheless heading in the direction of the Russian naval base in Kaliningrad.
He decided to shadow the vessel to learn more.
"I tried to sneak up on them, but then they slowed down a bit so I think they wanted keep me at a distance," Per Fransson told Fria Tider on Wednesday morning. "As you can see, the pictures have been taken from a distance with mist and drizzle. It was about three kilometers away so I took the photos through a binocular lens, which explains the round black frames".
On the portside of Professor Logachev, Fransson could see that something was was attached to the vessel and hanging out into the water. The images he took also show that the ship had a slight portside tilt.
"It looked as if something was hanging down into the water, but it was difficult to see," he told Fria Tider.
Per Fransson is sceptical in assessing the ability of the Swedish navy to succeed with its anti-submarine activities in the Stockholm archipelago.
"I think our lonely little military vessel [the Visby-class corvette used by the Swedish navy in the search] may now terminate its embarrassing submarine hunt," he says.
The Russian rescue ship is unusually large for a vessel of that kind, according to Fransson.
"Swedish SAR [Search and Rescue] vessels are about 20 to 30 meters long. This one is 104 meters long."
He also stated that Professor Logachev had light signals set in its foremast, which signals "limited maneuverability", and that the ship was traveling at only 3.7 knots, which could indicate that it had something on tow just below the surface. The low speed and the mysteriously large draft attracted his attention.
"A 6.2 meter draft seemed to be a lot for this ship, I thought," Per Fransson concluded.
The Swedish Armed Forces declined to comment on the information that Fria Tider received from Per Fransson.
