Ostsee cable damaged: ship set with Russian crew

Ostsee cable damaged: ship set with Russian crew

Baltic Sea cable sabotage
Norway sets suspicious ship with Russian crew






After a cable was damaged again in the Baltic Sea, Norwegian authorities have set a ship with a Russian occupation. Is Moscow behind sabotage?

New reversal in the case of the latest cable damage in the Baltic Sea: a suspicious ship with Russian crew has been set in Norway. The “Silver Dania” is suspected of being involved in the damage of a fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden, the police said in Tromsø in northern Norweg.

Therefore, at the request of the Latvian authorities, she was brought to the port of the city. The police are now on board the ship to make searches and interrogations and secure traces.

According to the police, the ship is registered in Norway. It also has a Norwegian owner, but runs between the Russian cities of St. Petersburg and Murmansk. According to the information, the entire crew is also Russian.

Data cable in the Baltic Sea damaged

After a series of similar incidents in the Baltic Sea, damage to a data cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and the port city of Ventspils in Latvia, which is used by the Latvian radio and television center (LVRTC), occurred. The Swedish authorities then set a different ship with a Bulgarian owner and started investigations into possible severe sabotage. The owner rejected an accusation of sabotage.

The “Silver Dania” is said to have passed the cable at about the same time. The Silver Sea shipping company contested any participation in the incident. The ship drove past the Swedish island of Gotland, near which the cable had been damaged. “But we didn’t throw an anchor,” said the head of the shipping company, Tormod Fossmark, at the request of the AFP news agency. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” he assured. The Norwegian authorities had brought the ship to a port “to rule out our participation”.

Is Russia’s shadow fleet behind it?

Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, important telecommunications and power cables have been damaged several times in the Baltic Sea. Experts assume that they are hybrid attacks against the West on behalf of Russia.

So far, it has so far been unclear whether sabotage is behind the cable breaks. However, there is a suspicion that partly the so -called Russian shadow fleet could be behind it. This means tankers and other cargo ships with opaque owner structures that Russia uses to avoid sanctions as a result of his war of aggression against Ukraine, for example during oil transport. The EU has issued sanctions against dozens of these ships, but its actual scope should be far greater. In order to better monitor cables and other critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, NATO recently launched the “Baltic Sentry” operation (German: Baltic Sea guard).

Most recently, four telecommunications cables and a power cable in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia were damaged on Christmas Day. The Finnish authorities suspect that the anchor of an oil tanker launched from the Russian St. Petersburg damaged cables running on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The Finnish authorities are investigating the suspicion of “severe sabotage”.

Dpa · AFP

yks

Source: Stern

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