Swedish authorities seized the Vezhen, sailing under the flag of Malta and registered with a Bulgarian shipping company, on Sunday over suspected sabotage of an underwater cable.
Sweden’s coast guard boarded and seized the ship they allege damaged the underwater fibre optic cable between Latvia and Sweden in the Baltic Sea, in yet another incident sparking fresh fears of sabotage.
After the cable’s operator said there was reason to believe the damage may have been caused by external influence, the Swedish prosecutors launched a preliminary investigation into the suspected sabotage and seized the ship believed to have been behind it.
The seized vessel is reported to be the Vezhen — a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier registered to a Bulgarian shipping company — with eight Bulgarian officers and nine sailors from Myanmar on board.
Local media say that two days before the incident, it left the Russian port of Ust-Luga and sailed towards South America loaded with fertilisers.
The head of the Bulgarian shipping company, Navigation Maritime Bulgare, Aleksandar Kalchev, said it was possible the ship caused the cable to break but dismissed any possibility of sabotage or any other action by the crew.
According to Kalchev, the ship accidentally dropped its anchor while it was sailing in extremely inclement weather on Saturday. The crew then woke up to see their anchor being dragged along the seabed.
This incident follows similar cases reported in the past two months between Lithuania and Sweden, Germany and Finland, and Estonia and Finland, as well as growing fears of cyber and hybrid interference by Russia.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the news can’t be a coincidence and added that too often in the Baltic Sea, “GPS signals are repeatedly disrupted, critical infrastructure is spied on with drones.”
She said the EU and NATO have intensified their work in the area, particularly within the last few weeks, and described plans for this coordination to expand to “strengthen our resilience”.
