The ship was intercepted after sailing for several hours with a submerged anchor, damaging cables from operators Elisa and Arelion that connect Finland to Estonia.
Finnish police confirmed this Wednesday that the ship suspected of a possible rupture of a submarine telecommunications cable in the Baltic is the Fitburg, a cargo ship traveling between Saint Petersburg and the Israeli port of Haifa.
Several heads of the Nordic country’s police and border guard explained, at a press conference, that the ship’s crew is made up of 14 sailors from Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, although they did not want to reveal, for now, the identity or nationality of the captain.
“The 14 crew members are in police custody. The police consider them suspects of aggravated interference with telecommunications and aggravated attempted sabotage,” police chief Lkka Koskimäki told journalists.
“This maritime operation once again demonstrated the excellent preparation of the police and other authorities to respond quickly and cooperate fluidly within their respective jurisdictions,” he added.
According to Koskimäki, the ship is being transferred to a safe location in Finnish territorial waters to be inspected and the investigation into the incident has been transferred to the Finnish National Investigation Office (KRP).
The police chief also assured that the freighter Fitburg sailed “for several hours” with one of its anchors submerged at sea, from the time the damage to the submarine telecommunications cable was detected at 05:45 (03:45 GMT) this morning until it was detained by the Coast Guard shortly after 11:00.
A within Finland’s exclusive economic zone and involved the intervention of a Coast Guard boat and a helicopter, from which several agents descended to the deck to take control of the bridge.
According to police authorities, the crew of the Fitburg offered no resistance and obeyed the agents, who ordered the captain to head towards Finnish territorial waters.
Finnish police had already announced that they were investigating a ship suspected of a possible rupture of a submarine telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea, which connects Finland and Estonia.
The investigation was launched after the Finnish operator Elisa reported that it had detected a fault in one of its submarine cables, located in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone.
The Estonian authorities reported that, in addition to the Elisa cable, another submarine cable owned by the Swedish company Arelion, which connects the two capitals across the Gulf of Finland, was also damaged.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Nordic country has suffered several incidents in which critical underwater infrastructure was damaged in strange circumstances, which Helsinki blames on hybrid attacks orchestrated by Moscow.
