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Early on Sunday morning, a subsea fiber-optic cable between Gotland and Latvia was "significantly damaged," according to the Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (LVRTC). Vineta Sprugaine, Head of Corporate Communications at LVRTC, said in a statement that there is reason to believe that the damage was caused by "external forces," but the precise location and extent of damage have not yet been identified. <\/p>\n
LVRTC has recommended a criminal investigation into the cause of the breach, and state police chief Armands Ruks told Latvian outlet LTV that a criminal proceeding has been opened for "intentional damage to another's property." <\/p>\n
NATO is responding to the break as a potential anchor-drag incident, the fourth in little more than a year in the Baltic. Warships from NATO's Baltic security patrol mission have intercepted two ships, one of which has been detained. Open-source intelligence analysts have identified the suspect vessels as the Maltese-flagged bulker Vezhen <\/em>and the Russia-linked LNG carrier Pskov<\/em>, formerly operated by Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot.<\/p>\n The disruption occurred on the Ventspils-Gotland section of the data cable in the early hours of Sunday morning. Vezhen <\/em>was transiting close to Gotland, within the Swedish EEZ, and AIS data appears to show that she slowed for half an hour after passing the cable crossings. Pskov<\/em> was in international waters, and her AIS track showed signs of transmission interruption, a possible indication that the transceiver may have been temporarily turned off. <\/p>\n Like most vessels in the Sovcomflot fleet, Pskov's <\/em>ownership and management were recently transferred to holding companies in business-friendly jurisdictions. As of Sunday evening, the vessel was still under way in the Baltic in international waters, escorted by multiple NATO patrol vessels.<\/p>\n "Sweden, Latvia and NATO are closely cooperating on the matter. Sweden will contribute with relevant capabilities to the effort to investigate the suspected incident," said Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. <\/p>\n maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early on Sunday morning, a subsea fiber-optic cable between Gotland and Latvia was "significantly damaged," according to the Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (LVRTC). Vineta Sprugaine, Head of Corporate Communications at LVRTC, said in a statement that there is reason to believe that the damage was caused by "external forces," but the precise …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[24945,7405,2050,24946,2002,4710,1231,5248,18585],"class_list":["post-55210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-ampquotexternal","tag-cable","tag-case","tag-damageampquot","tag-fourth","tag-latvia","tag-reports","tag-subsea","tag-subsea-cable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/55211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}