Finland brings charges against cargo ship officers for cutting submarine cables

The Finnish Prosecution Service announced Monday it was bringing charges against the captain and the bosun of a cargo vessel which damaged several submarine cables in the Baltic Sea on New Year’s Eve.

The Fitburg, which had been transporting sanctioned steel products from Russia to Israel, according to Finnish Customs, was seized by Finnish authorities following cable faults detected in the region. Two of its crew were subsequently arrested.

According to the deputy prosecutor general, the ship’s officers have now been charged with “having damaged two subsea telecommunications cables and of having attempted to damage a total of eight other subsea connections.”

The ship is believed to have dragged its damaged anchor along the seabed for a distance of at least 130 kilometers, “until the vessel’s movement was halted by measures taken by Finnish authorities.”

Both of the defendants have denied committing the offenses. They are also set to argue that Finland lacks jurisdiction in the case, as the locations of the cable damages are outside Finnish territorial waters, according to the prosecutors.

The date for the hearing of the case, including the issue of Finnish jurisdiction, will be determined by the Helsinki District Court. The country's prosecutors said trial materials will be made public at the beginning of the hearing, unless the District Court decides otherwise.

The seizure of the Fitburg came more than a year after Finnish armed police detained the Eagle S, a Russia-linked oil tanker that damaged multiple cables on Christmas Day 2024. An attempt to prosecute the ship’s senior officers collapsed amid legal rulings disputing Finland’s jurisdiction over the case.

In that case, the Eagle S was carrying unleaded petrol and diesel from Russia, activity also sanctioned by the European Union, but was allowed to continue on its way as the cargo was being transferred outside of the EU.

The cable breaks caused by the Eagle S were among the most scrutinized in a series of recent cable faults in the Baltic Sea that alarmed onlookers who feared they were part of a Russian sabotage campaign.

In response to these incidents, NATO announced increasing patrols of the Baltic Sea involving frigates and maritime patrol aircraft, as well as “a small fleet of naval drones.”

Officials from several European countries on the North Sea and Baltic Sea previously told Recorded Future News there is increasing confidence among their governments that the incidents were accidental and not directed by the Kremlin.

One European official said they had been briefed that, on such ships with limited professionalism, incompetent ship-masters often don’t want to go through the bother of arguing with the crew to trek out to the bow of the vessel in inclement weather to hoist the anchor and avoid dragging it across the seabed, where most of the damages have occurred.