Borys the Bottlenose has jumped ship, or rather swum under the ship, and taken his fellow dolphins, capable of laying mines, attacking divers and spotting submarines, with him.

It turns out that when Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Crimea he was interested not just in extending Russia’s territory, but its crew of killer cetacean mammals, too.

The story, however is completely true. An employee of the Russian navy said they had exciting plans for their latest spoils of war: “Our experts have developed new devices, which convert the detection of objects by the dolphins underwater sonar to a signal on an operator’s monitor.”