A Swedish prosecutor said on Feb. 3 that a cargo ship seized last month did rupture an undersea cable in the Baltic Sea but that it was an accident rather than sabotage.
The severing of the subsea cable linking Sweden and Latvia on Jan. 26 followed several similar incidents in recent months and triggered a hunt for vessels suspected of being responsible.
Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said an investigation found that Vezhen’s anchor sliced through the cable but attributed it to a combination of bad weather, equipment deficiencies, and poor seamanship.
Ljungqvist said the Maltese-flagged vessel had been released.
“We can see that the anchor was dropped without involvement by the crew,” Ljungqvist said. “We have film footage where we can see a wave hitting the lock and the anchor drops. In this case, we can say ‘No, it wasn’t a hybrid attack.’”
He said two of the three locking mechanisms preventing the anchor from dropping had been out of commission for a long time and that the third was a manual lock.
Ljungqvist said the ship dragged its anchor for more than 24 hours before the crew noticed it had dropped.
“We can see that the speed drops. The anchor pulls the ship in one direction, but the autopilot compensated for it,” he said.
The conclusion supports the assessment of Bulgarian shipping company Navigation Maritime Bulgare, which owns the Vezhen.
Last week, the company said it does not have information about any “intentional actions” by the crew of the ship that “could lead to such an incident.”
Swedish police seized and boarded the Vezhen the day after the cable was damaged in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone.
A second ship, the Silver Dania, a Norwegian cargo ship with an all-Russian crew that was seized in Norway at the request of Latvian authorities, was also cleared of wrongdoing and released on Jan. 31.
“The investigation will continue, but we see no reason for the ship to remain in Tromsoe any longer. No findings have been made linking the ship to the act [of damaging the subsea cable],” Norwegian police said in a statement.
The Silver Dania’s owner, the Silver Sea shipping group, denied that the vessel was involved in the incident, Norwegian broadcaster TV2 reported.
The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert because of a series of power cable, telecom link, and gas pipeline outages since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
Norway, Sweden, and Latvia are NATO members. The alliance has recently boosted its security presence in the Baltic with frigates, aircraft, and naval drones following a spate of incidents that have heightened concerns about possible Chinese and Russian activities in the region.
Pevkur compared the charge to an airport landing fee and said it would be “basically an insurance fee.”
