Suspected sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic continues to spread in the waters around Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden, with a recent incident leading to the arrest of a Norwegian-owned refrigerated cargo vessel (reefer) in Tromsø. It was allowed to sail again, but police, maritime authorities and NATO are stepping up patrols.
A Norwegian coast guard ship ordered the reefer Silver Dania to dock at Tromsø as it sailed on its regular route between St Petersburg and Murmansk. Police in Tromsø had received complaints from Latvian authorities, who suspected the Silver Dania was involved in severe damage to a fibercable linking Latvia and Sweden.
Local authorities in Tromsø told state broadcaster NRK they were eager to help, leading to local police and maritime officials boarding the vessel, questioning crew and searching the vessel for evidence of any wrongdoing. Prosecutor Ronny Jørgensen of the Troms Police District said that they didn’t find anything linking the ship to the damaged cables, though, and the ship was allowed to sail again on Friday night.
The sheer numbers of cable-cutting incidents in just the past two years, meanwhile, isn’t believed to be coincidental. Russia is widely believed to be behind what’s called a “hybrid threat” aimed at frightening Baltic countries that are leaving Russian energy networks in favour of supplies form Finland, Sweden and Poland instead.
The vessel’s Norwegian owner, Bergen-based Silver Sea, was surprised by the arrest. Even though the vessel sails between Russia ports and has Russian crew, it’s under Norwegian flag and has a long history in the area. “I thing it was unnecessary to sent out a coast guard vessel to bring in a cargo vessel,” Tormod Fossmark of Silver Sea told newspaper Aftenposten. He also said the vessel could produce data showing it held an even speed of 13 knots with no signs of disruption along the way.
NewsinEnglish.no staff