Norway Detains Second Ship Suspected of Cable Severing Near Gotland
31 January, 2025 Ship Silver Dania. Photo credits: Marine Traffic Norwegian police have detained the Silver Dania vessel, which is suspected of breaking a communication cable near the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
The police of the Norwegian city of Tromso reported on this in its press release. "Based on a legal request from the Latvian authorities, as well as a decision of the North Troms and Senja District Court in Norway, the Tromso Police District detained the Norwegian-registered vessel Silver Dania, owned by a Norwegian company. Police are conducting a search, interrogation and evidence collection operation on the vessel," the police said.
In addition, it is reported that the crew consisted of Russians. And according to DW, it was heading from St. Petersburg to Murmansk.
Coast Guard ship KV Bison.
Photo credits: Marine Traffic
The vessel was detained by the Coast Guard vessel KV Bison in a police-led operation at around 9:00 pm on Thursday, January 30, 2025. At the time, the vessel was in the Norwegian economic zone off the coast of the Tromso area. At 06:40 am on January 21, the vessel was delivered to the port of Tromso.
The reason for the arrest was the suspicion that the vessel was involved in damaging a fiber optic cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden.
The location of the cable break. Source: Reuters
On the morning of January 26, another submarine communication cable connecting Latvia and Sweden was damaged in the Baltic Sea. The cable ran in the area between the coastal Latvian city of Ventspils and the Swedish city of Farosund, which is located on the island of Gotland.
The very next day, the Swedish government detained the first vessel suspected of damaging the submarine communication cable. It was reportedly the Maltese-flagged bulk carrier Vezhen, owned by the Bulgarian company Navigation Maritime Bulgare. Captain Alexander Kalchev, said the Vezhen might have struck the Baltic undersea cable that had been damaged on Sunday.
He said one of the ship's anchors had fallen to the seabed in high winds and that there had not been malicious intent. "They (the crew) have been instructed to assist authorities and the situation never escalated and it is calm at the moment," he told Reuters, adding the crew had been initially held at gunpoint. As previously reported, in mid-January 2025, NATO announced the launch of a new operation, Baltic Sentry, to protect the region's maritime infrastructure.
Dutch F-35A fighters over the Baltic Sea.
Source: Dutch Ministry of Defense.
The new operation was created after a series of sabotage incidents in November and December 2024, when merchant ships damaged submarine cables in the Baltic Sea.