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Damage to submarine cables in the Baltic Sea: verdict against Russian captain
Ten months after the sabotage of two cables in the Baltic Sea, a Russian captain and a crew member were sentenced to several years in prison in Finland. They are supposed to forward the submarine cables
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Damage to submarine cables Sabotage in the Baltic Sea - verdict against Russian captain As of: November 5th, 2026 • 1:09 p.m
Ten months after the sabotage of two cables in the Baltic Sea, a Russian captain and a crew member were sentenced to several years in prison in Finland. They are said to have deliberately damaged the submarine cables with an anchor.
After damaging Baltic Sea cables, a court in Finland sentenced the Russian captain of the freighter "Fitburg" to three and a half years in prison for sabotage and disrupting telecommunications traffic. A crew member from Azerbaijan should be behind bars for two years and ten months.
The convicts must also jointly pay around 1.9 million euros in damages. The captain of the cargo ship “Fitburg” was also sentenced to an additional payment of around 85,000 euros.
According to investigations, the freighter "Fitburg", sailing under the flag of the Caribbean state of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, allowed its anchor to drag at least 130 kilometers across the seabed in the Gulf of Finland on December 31st. Two undersea telecommunications cables between Finland and Estonia were damaged, and investigators are convinced that eight more were damaged.
The ship was seized on December 31st and 14 crew members were arrested. more
The two men denied the allegations and disputed the jurisdiction of the Finnish judiciary. The captain will appeal the verdict, but the crew member has not yet made a decision, their respective lawyers said.
The "Fitburg" came into the focus of the authorities after damage was noticed on a data cable that connects the Finnish capital Helsinki with Estonia's capital Tallinn. When the ship was stopped by authorities, it had its anchor chain down. The freighter was on its way from St. Petersburg in Russia to the Israeli port city of Haifa.
Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, important telecommunications and power cables in the Baltic Sea have repeatedly been damaged. Experts assume that these are hybrid attacks on behalf of Russia. The suspected direct cause of the cable damage is the so-called shadow fleet of often outdated ships flying foreign flags, which Russia uses to circumvent the sanctions.
This topic in the program: MDR aktuell – The news radio | News | November 5, 2026 | 12:00 p.m