The cargo ship Vezhen did damage a subsea cable linking Sweden and Latvia last month but it was an accident, not sabotage, a Swedish prosecutor said on Monday, adding that the Maltese-flagged vessel had been released.
The incident took place on Jan. 26 and was one of several in recent months, triggered a hunt for vessels suspected of involvement.
The prosecutor said the Vezhen's anchor severed the cable but that the incident was related to a combination of bad weather, equipment deficiencies and poor seamanship.
"We can see that the anchor was dropped without involvement by the crew," Senior Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist told Reuters.
He said two of the three locking mechanisms preventing the anchor from dropping had been out of commission for a lengthy period. The third was a manual lock.
"We have film footage where we can see a wave hitting the lock and the anchor drops," Ljungqvist said. "In this case we can say 'No, it wasn't a hybrid attack'."
Ljungqvist said the ship dragged its anchor for more than 24 hours.
"We can see that the speed drops. The anchor pulls the ship in one direction, but the autopilot compensated for it," he said, adding that the crew had failed to notice this.
Swedish police seized and boarded the Vezhen the day after the cable was damaged in Sweden's exclusive economic zone.
A second vessel, the Silver Dania, a Norwegian cargo ship with an all-Russian crew, was seized in Norway at the request of Latvian authorities but was cleared of wrongdoing and released.
The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link, and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
In response, NATO last month said it would deploy frigates, aircraft and naval drones to help protect critical infrastructure in the region and that it reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a threat.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
6 Comments
Login to comment
TaiwanIsNotChina
Fine the heck out of the operator.
JJE
Called it.
A certain prominent newspaper did a surprisingly good story on this topic weeks ago, dispelling the myth of some nefarious Kremlin plot but the meritless hysteria fed on itself.
Nothing but accidents related to a "combination of bad weather, equipment deficiencies and poor seamanship".
There were even totally false allegations trumpeted that one of these ships constituted a floating spy base. Absurd stuff.
theFu
When someone breaks someone else's stuff, they are expected to pay to make it right.
It may be an accident or it may be something different that they know and will watch for other ships attempting. We don't know and I doubt we ever will. It is very suspicious, regardless.
There's a difference in knowing something happened and being able to prove in court.
Ships sailing from Russia should be more careful. This is about the 5th "accident" like this. That can't be a coincidence.
JJE
Surely that logic extends to pipelines too.
Burgerland
What? but our NATO expert bros told us repeatedly it was Russian sabotage, 100%. They were wrong and misinforming again. As usual.
JJE
Precisely. This amounted to yet another NATO misinformation campaign, designed to incite opinion and reinforce manufactured negative stereotypes (also known as 'propaganda'). Wasn't surprising to see so many taking the bait without doing due diligence and employing any level of objective thinking.