7 episodes
Cold Front DR LYD Dokumentar & Krimi
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- Society & Culture
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4.8 • 54 Ratings
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On a November day in 2022, Danish journalist Niels finds himself in a small rubber boat out at sea between Denmark and Sweden. He is chasing a potential Russian spy ship. Upon locating it, he spots a crew member with an assault rifle around his neck, staring directly at him.
This hunt for the potential spy ship is part of a yearlong investigation. Since Russia's full scale invastion of Ukraine, a group of Nordic journalists have been digging ever deeper into a murky world of Russian spying, seabed warfare and disinformation.
This podcast series will end up revealing evidence of what experts call a complex hybrid war, which is already playing out in the Nordic countries and in the waters surrounding them.
Cold Front is a series produced by DR Documentary.
Written and directed by Merle Baeré and Frederik Hugo Ledegaard Thim.
The story was researched together with Niels Fastrup, Lisbeth Quass, Inghild Eriksen, Håvard Gulldahl, Maria Georgieva and Ali Fegan.
Script consulting and narration by Tim Hinman.
Music, sound design and mixing by Mikkel Rønnau and Marie Kildebæk.
Editorial assistant Anna Brage Stevens.
Senior producer and editor Jens Vithner.
This podcastseries is a part of a collaboration between DR, NRK, SVT and Yle.
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1:6 - Putin's hidden war
Dressed in unobtrusive dark clothes, the Swedish journalists Ali and Maria drive towards a secret location to meet with a source. This source will hand the team one of their first major leads - a list with names on suspected Russian intelligence officers on the Russian embassy in Sweden. In Norway the team starts to look into two mysterious and still unsolved cable cuts at the bottom of the sea in the north of Norway.
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2:6 - Spies on the ground
In a hotel by a lake, Niels, Maria and Ali meet up with a source from the organization Dossier Center who is able to help them name possible Russian spies. This will lead them to a story about how a scientist in Denmark was recruited by a Russian intelligence officers - and exactly what he was tasked to spy on.
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3:6 - The explosion sites
Niels is in a small house at the countryside somewhere in the UK. He is here to meet up with a source, who claims to know something about suspicious activity at sea very close to the locations that later become the Nord Stream explosion sites. The source also claims that no one else is aware of this information. Now he's willing to share it with the team.
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4:6 - The fake letter
In the midst of a diplomatic crisis a forged letter appears online. It turns out that it was made to create conflict between Denmark, the US and Greenland. But who made it?
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5:6 - Mandate to kill
In Sweden a famous Chechen-blogger, Tumso Abdurakhmanov, is attacked with a hammer while he is asleep. The attack turns out to be part of a much bigger story about how Russian services have been given a mandate to kill.
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6:6 - The Vladimirski
Out in the sea between Sweden and Denmark, Niels is chasing a Russian spy ship. And what he soon realises is, that the ship has been sailing close to several windfarms. Apparently mapping out critical infrastructure.
Customer Reviews
An excellent series which gives a great sense of the ups and downs of investigative reporting
Even more impressive is the fact that these Nordic reporters deliver the story in perfect English.
The podcast is not flawless (no factual reporting ever is). Apart from neat reporting on Russian trawlers cutting internet cables, the first two episodes are the weakest. Do we really need to be told that spies use diplomatic cover? But then, with the Nordsteam blasts, it really comes to life, showcasing open-source investigators at their best. The only negatives are the overly dramatic music, OTT narrative, and what appear to be staged audio notes. They only distract instead of enhancing the reporting. Oh, and then there’s the AI-generated re-voicing which sits firmly in the bottom of the uncanny valley. Why bother with a weird device that will distract (or even put off) listeners?