A Finnish court jailed the Russian captain and a senior crew member from a freighter on Thursday for sabotaging two undersea cables linking Finland and Estonia. The Russian captain was ordered jailed for three years and six months and the crew member, an Azerbaijan national, for two years and 10 months.
The Fitburg, a 132-metre-long cargo ship that had left St Petersburg in Russia and was sailing to the Israeli port of Haifa, was detained on New Year’s Eve following suspicion that the ship’s anchor had damaged a telecoms cable in the Gulf of Finland.
The vessel, flagged in St Vincent and the Grenadines, is believed to have dragged its anchor along the seabed for several kilometres, Finnish authorities said.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many experts and political leaders have viewed suspected sabotage of undersea cables as part of a hybrid war carried out by Russia against Western countries.
Eight NATO countries bordering the Baltic Sea, which also borders Russia, have been on high alert following a series of incidents that damaged undersea power cables, telecoms links and gas pipelines — Euronews reports.
The incidents have generally been regarded as deliberate acts of sabotage suspected of being linked to Russia and have prompted NATO to boost its presence in the region with patrol frigates, aircraft and naval drones.
Both NATO and the EU have also been on high alert following a string of airspace violations, thought to be from Russia.
