Norwegian police announced that they have seized a local ship with a Russian crew, which is suspected of being involved in sabotaging undersea telecommunications cables between Sweden and Latvia in the Baltic Sea.
Police in the city of Tromso said on Friday that the Norwegian-owned and Norwegian-registered ship, Silver Dania, was detained following a legal request from Latvian authorities and based on an order from the District Court in Troms, Norway.
This is the second ship to be detained in the last week over cable damage. Swedish police detained a Maltese-flagged cargo ship on suspicion of damaging underwater cables.
"There are suspicions that the ship was involved in the major damage to a fiber cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden," police said in a statement.
"Police are conducting an operation on the ship to search, conduct interviews and find evidence," she said.
Several underwater telecommunications and power cables have been damaged in the Baltic Sea since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Experts and politicians have blamed Russia's secret fleet of old oil tankers. The Kremlin has denied involvement.
In the wake of recent sabotage actions in the region, NATO and EU leaders have agreed to launch an observation mission in the Baltic Sea.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said that "such hostile actions" will not go unanswered, promising to increase NATO's military presence in the region.
The first major incident of infrastructure sabotage occurred in September 2022, when a series of underwater explosions destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline, which was built to carry Russian gas to Europe. It has not yet been determined what caused the explosions.
An underwater gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down in October 2023 after being damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship.
The most recent incident occurred on January 26, when the telecommunications cable connecting Sweden and Latvia was severed.
A month earlier, in another incident, the "Estlink 2" power cable and four telecommunications cables connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged.
This happened just a few weeks after two telecommunications cables in Swedish waters were snapped on November 17-18.
The December 25 incident is suspected to have involved the "Eagle S", a Cook Islands-flagged oil tanker believed to be part of Russia's "secret fleet". Investigators suspect the cables were damaged when the tanker dragged them with its anchor. /REL (A2 Televizion)
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