Sweden Detains Vezhen Vessel Suspected of Breaking Cable Near Netherlands
27 January, 2025 The cargo ship Vezhen is anchored for inspection by Swedish authorities near Karlskrona, Sweden, January 27, 2025. Source: News Agency/Johan Nilsson via REUTERS Swedish authorities boarded a Maltese-flagged ship seized in connection with the latest breach of cables running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to begin an investigation into the matter.
Reuters reported on this. "We can confirm that persons from Swedish authorities have been on board the vessel to carry out investigative measures," Swedish Security Services spokesperson Johan Wikstrom said. The bulk carrier Vezhen, owned by the Bulgarian company Navigation Maritime Bulgare, was reportedly detained.
The head of the Bulgarian company, Captain Aleksandar 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.
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26, 2025. Photo credits: Reuters
"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.
A spokesperson from Sweden's Meteorological and Hydrological Institute said there had been the winds of about 8-10 metres per second outside Gotland in the early hours of Sunday. "That's not very strong wind. It's well below the 14 metres per second that is the threshold for a gale warning," the spokesperson told Reuters, adding that waves were not very high either.
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 F?r?sund, which is located on the island of Gotland.
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LVRTC (Latvian State Broadcasting Center), which owns the cable, suggested that it had been significantly damaged due to external factors.
Sabotage in the Baltic Sea
On December 26, it was reported that Finland had boarded and detained the Eagle S tanker suspected of damaging the cable.
The Finnish Border Guard intercepted the tanker after the Estlink 2 submarine electric cable had been damaged in the Gulf of Finland on December 25. The vessel, which was transporting oil from Russia to Egypt, is suspected of deliberately cutting communications between the two countries, as it was passing close to them at the time of the incident.
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Law enforcement officers then discovered that one of the anchors on the ship had been cut, which appears to have been used to sever the cable.
According to the Marinetraffic monitoring service, which tracks ship movements using transponder signals, the Eagle S was heading to Egypt and clearly slowed down while passing the area above the cable.
In November, the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 was seen in a similar incident when it passed through a data cable between Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Lithuania around the time they were severed.
The Wall Street Journal later reported, citing anonymous sources associated with the investigation, that it was Russian intelligence that had ordered the ship's captain to damage the cables with an anchor.