Finnish authorities have boarded and seized a cargo vessel sailing from Russia on suspicion of sabotaging two underwater telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea, where a series of similar incidents have occurred in recent years.
The vessel, the Fitburg, was on its way from St Petersburg to Haifa in Israel. Finnish coastguard officers boarded the ship at 11am, about six hours after disruption to the cables was first reported. Fourteen crew members including several Russians were taken into custody.
A helicopter sent to investigate reported that the ship was dragging its anchor along the bottom of the seabed. “At this stage, it is still too early to assess whether this was an intentional act or an accident,” Helsinki’s deputy police chief Heikki Kopperoinen told the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, some experts and political leaders have viewed the suspected sabotage of cables in the Baltic Sea as part of a hybrid war carried out by Russia against western countries.
Detectives said they would interrogate the crew, which includes sailors from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The vessel, sailing under a flag of convenience from St Vincent and Grenadines, has been taken to a port near Helsinki.
EU countries accuse Russia of using dilapidated vessels belonging to a “shadow fleet” to smuggle oil around the world in defiance of western sanctions. The fleet has been linked with previous cases of cable-cutting and with the mysterious appearance of drones in Denmark and Germany.
In January, Nato stepped up its naval presence in the area under an operation called Baltic Sentry. It came after Finnish commandos seized another ship, the Eagle S, on Christmas Day 2024 when it damaged critical infrastructure. A court in Helsinki later acquitted its crew on the grounds the incident took place outside Finnish territorial waters.
“Finland is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary,” the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said in a statement posted to X on Wednesday.
Finland’s deputy prosecutor general, Jukka Rappe, said there were “strong indications of a crime” involving the Fitburg but said it was too soon to reach a conclusion. But there was sufficient evidence to open a preliminary investigation, he added.
The vessel was in Finland’s exclusive economic zone when it was located by a border guard patrol boat and helicopter. Its anchor chain was found to be lowered into the sea, police said. Finnish police said they were investigating “aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage, and aggravated interference with telecommunications”.
The damaged cables were in the Gulf of Finland between Finland and Estonia. One belonged to the Finnish telecommunications operator Elisa and the other, according to Estonia, is owned by the Swedish provider Arelion. Services were routed via other cables.
Wednesday’s incident came as Russia launched a large-scale drone attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa. Six people were injured, including children, with four apartment buildings hit. Two energy facilities were left with significant damage, the power company DTEK said.
Russia has been systematically targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving civilians without heat and light in freezing winter conditions. More than 170,000 people had no electricity after the Odesa attack, Ukraine’s energy ministry said. The Kyiv region is also experiencing severe blackouts.
Meanwhile, the defence ministry in Moscow released video footage which it said was of a crashed drone that was on its way on Sunday to Vladimir Putin’s presidential palace in the Novgorod region. Russia claims Ukraine carried out a major attack with 91 drones.
The story has been widely debunked. On Wednesday Ukraine’s foreign ministry dismissed the video three days after the event as “laughable”, Reuters reported, and said Kyiv was “absolutely confident” the attack did not happen. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, dismissed the report as “unfounded”.
