The NATO military alliance is ramping up efforts to protect undersea cables in the region amid growing concerns of Russian sabotage and spying.
A Norwegian ship with an all-Russian crew has been seized by police in Norway on suspicion of being involved in damage to an underwater telecoms cable in the Baltic Sea.
The Silver Dania was stopped on Thursday evening and brought into the port of Tromsø in northern Norway on Friday by a Norwegian coast guard vessel, local police said. This action followed a request from Latvian authorities and a ruling by a Norwegian court.
Police in Tromsø said there is a suspicion that the cargo ship — which was sailing between the Russian ports of St. Petersburg and Murmansk — was involved in serious damage on Sunday to the cable that connects Latvia to the Swedish island of Gotland.
Swedish prosecutors announced on Sunday afternoon that they had opened a preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage and ordered the detention of a vessel on suspicion of damaging the cable, the Malta-flagged Vezhen.
The Vezhen’s Bulgarian owner said it was possible that the ship had accidentally caused a cable to break, but dismissed any possibility of sabotage or any other wrongdoing.
Sunday’s cable rupture follows a string of similar incidents that have heightened fears of Russian sabotage and spying in the strategic Baltic Sea region.
In the last three months alone, there has been damage to a cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden, another connecting Germany and Finland, and a number of cables linking Estonia and Finland.
Such damage has been linked by authorities to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — ageing tankers that are dodging sanctions and ensuring continued oil revenue for Moscow.
The NATO military alliance earlier this month launched a new mission to protect undersea cables in the region by deploying frigates, naval drones, and patrol aircraft.
“We will do everything in our power to make sure that we fight back, are able to see what is happening and take the next steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And our adversaries should know this,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said at the time.
Additional sources • AP
