Norwegian authorities detain Russian-crewed ship over suspected Baltic cable sabotage
Norwegian authorities, acting on a request from Latvian officials, have detained the vessel Silver Dania, crewed by Russians, on suspicion of damaging an underwater communication cable in the Baltic Sea, reports Norway's National Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. The ship has been brought to the port of Tromsø, police confirmed on Friday, January 31.
According to NRK, the ship is owned by the Norwegian shipping company Silversea, but its entire crew is composed of Russian nationals. Built in 1989 and registered in Norway, Silver Dania currently sails between St. Petersburg and Murmansk.
The undersea cable between Latvia and Sweden, owned by the Latvian Radio & TV Center (LVRTC), is laid more than 50 meters deep. News of its damage first broke on the morning of January 26, 2025.
The head of Silver Sea, the company that owns the vessel, denied any illegal activity. "We sailed past Gotland without anchoring," Tormod Fossmark told AFP. Norwegian authorities brought the ship to port to clear the crew of suspicion regarding the cable damage, he explained.
On January 26, a fiber-optic cable connecting the Latvian city of Ventspils with the Swedish island of Gotland was damaged in the Baltic Sea. Latvian military personnel inspected the Michalis San, a vessel near the incident site, but found no suspicious activity or anchor damage. The ship, flying the Panamanian flag, was headed for Russia.
Meanwhile, Swedish prosecutors have launched an investigation into what they term a "large-scale sabotage" and have detained the vessel Vezhen, suspected of being involved in the incident. According to Vesselfinder, this vessel had departed from the Russian port of Ust-Luga several days earlier and was in the area between Gotland and Latvia when the communications cable was allegedly damaged.
In recent months, the Baltic Sea has seen repeated instances of damage to critical telecommunications and energy cables. Some experts and politicians view these as attacks possibly orchestrated by Russia using its "shadow fleet”. However, US and EU intelligence services concluded that these incidents are likely accidental, rather than acts of sabotage by Russia, as reported by The Washington Post on January 19, citing unnamed sources.