Early on Sunday, January 26, 2025, a submarine telecommunications cable between Sweden and Latvia in the Baltic Sea was damaged by a ship heading for Russia. This is the fourth case of sabotage in the waters between the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, after two previous sabotage incidents in quick succession at the end of November, and another on December 25. Telecommunications cables or electrical cables, all were carried by ships, leaving their anchors to drag for hundreds of kilometers.
The cable in question, sabotaged this Sunday, belongs to a Latvian entity, we learned from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who spoke on X. The Swedish prosecutor's office added that a ship suspected of having carried out the sabotage "was seized by decision of the prosecutor", after "several authorities, including the national police operations unit, the coast guard and the armed forces, are participating in the investigation", specified the prosecutor in charge of the case, Mats Ljungqvist.
A suspected ship: the Michalis San
The incident took place in Swedish territorial waters, at a depth of at least 50 meters, and Latvia deployed a warship to the scene of the problem, before confirming that it had identified a "suspicious ship." The Latvian authorities revealed the name of the ship, the "Michalis San," as well as two other cargo ships, the first of which was heading for Russia. Still visible on the MarineTraffic website, the gigantic 190-metre-long, 12-year-old ship was coming from Algeria.
As reported by the Financial Times, the incident comes at a particular time for the Baltic countries, which are preparing to become independent from an electrical system dating back to the Soviet era in early February. They will be part of a new European continental network. After joining the EU and NATO, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania see this new step as their definitive integration into the West.
Faced with the acceleration in the number of incidents encountered in the Baltic Sea with submarine cables, the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs declared that navigation rules should be reviewed, and in particular "those concerning the use of anchors". He added that the increasing number of incidents showed that there was little chance that they would all be incidents.
Source: Financial Times
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