A vessel suspected of damaging an undersea telecommunications cable connecting Helsinki to Tallinn in the Gulf of Finland has been seized by Finnish police. The vessel, according to the authorities, was “responsible for damage to the cable” owned by the national telecommunications group Elisa, which is located in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone.
The Fitburg classified as a “vessel of interest”
The seized cargo ship bears the name of Fitburg: it left St. Petersburg on Tuesday 30 December and was stopped by the Finnish authorities on 31 December. The vessel, 132 meters long, flies the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a Caribbean state. According to ship tracking site MarineTraffic, the Fitburg is currently off Porkkala and was headed towards Haifa, Israel.
The vessel, as well as its IMO number (which uniquely identifies each vessel and remains unchanged despite the name change), does not appear in the official sanctions lists. However, Open Sanctions – an open source platform that collects and monitors sanctions regimes – has previously classified the Fitburg as a “vessel of interest”. This definition indicates a vessel deemed worthy of monitoring, despite not being formally subject to sanctions and does not automatically imply a connection with the Russian shadow fleet.
The Finnish police have opened an investigation for aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage and aggravated obstruction of telecommunications, collaborating with several national and international authorities, in particular Estonian ones.
The facts
In the early hours of today’s morning, December 31st, the Elisa group had detected an anomaly on its cable and reported it to the Finnish authorities. A coast guard patrol boat and helicopter then spotted a suspicious vessel in Finland’s exclusive economic zone. The vessel suspected of causing the latest damage was dragging its anchor in the sea and was headed towards Finnish territorial waters, police and the Finnish Border Guard said. The coast guard then ordered the ship to stop, weigh anchor and move, before throwing it into Finnish territorial waters. The Fitburg is currently located off Porkkala.
A few hours after the news of the seizure of the vessel by Finland was released, the Swedish authorities announced that another submarine cable located in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Estonia had been damaged. “This is a cable break in two places in the Estonian economic zone,” said Anders Wallinder, head of the preparedness and security department at the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Agency. The cable break occurred during the night between 29 and 30 December and has no repercussions on users but increases the vulnerability of the system, added Wallinder, interviewed by the Swedish news agency TT.
The case adds to another similar one that occurred a few days ago. The Estonian Ministry of Justice had reported that a second telecommunications cable connecting Estonia to Finland had suffered an interruption. It is not yet clear whether the cable, owned by the Swedish company Arelion, ran parallel to that of the Finnish operator Elisa.
“Finland is ready to face several security challenges”
In recent years, energy and communications infrastructure, including underwater cables and pipelines, have been damaged several times in the Baltic Sea, bordered by Estonia, Finland and Russia. Since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many experts and politicians consider the alleged sabotage of cables as an element of the hybrid war waged by Russia against Western countries. President of Finland, Alexander Stubb thanked the timely work of the Finnish authorities and underlined that the government is following the developments of the issue: “Finland is ready to face various security challenges and reacts appropriately to the situation” added President Stubb on X.
