Norwegian police announced today that it has arrested a Norwegian ship with a Russian crew that is considered a suspected involvement in causing damage to a telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea.

The Silver Dania cargo ship (central photo by Marinetraffic) was arrested at the request of the Latvian authorities and with the assistance of the Norway Coast Guard, police said in the Tromso town of North Norway.

“There are suspicions that the ship was involved in causing serious damage to a fiber cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden,” police said in a statement.

“The suspicion is that someone (in Silver Dania) has something to do with the event with the cable,” lawyer Ronnie Gergenchen said in a press conference. He refused to go into details.

Silver Dania shipowner, Silver Sea shipping company, denied that the ship was involved in the damage to the underwater fiber optic cable, the Norwegian network TV2 reported.

Sweden and Latvia have begun investigations on suspicions of sabotage on Sunday on the cable connecting the two countries and Swedish police arrested the Malta -flagged cargo ship. Vezhen for which there were suspicions that it caused the harm.

Early on Sunday morning, a fiber optic cable belonging to the National Latvian Radio and Television Center (LVRTC) connecting the Swedish island of Gotland with the Latvian city of Ventsplis, suffered damage.

The LVRTC had said that preliminary estimates showed “external factors”.

Norwegian police spokesman said the arrests of the two ships were linked to the same incident.

The match Lown Lungvist, the Swedish prosecutor, who handles a sabotage investigation in Sweden, said he now has a clearer picture of what happened and that he believes Vezhen has caused damage to the cable.

“Our view is that the ship we captured is the one that caused the cable to cut,” he told Reuters.

“We examined the ship arrested in Norway but for a variety of reasons we released it.”

He refused to comment further, citing the confidentiality of the research.

The Baltic Sea region is in a state of high alarm after a series of events on an energy cable, telecommunications connection and gas pipeline after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and NATO’s military alliance recently reinforced its presence with frigates and aircraft. Drones.