Finnish court jails Fitburg captain and crew member over Baltic cable damage

Verdict and sentences

The Helsinki District Court on Thursday, 5 November 2026, convicted the captain and a senior crew member of the cargo ship Fitburg of aggravated criminal damage. The captain, Andrei Maksimenko, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison. Vusal Majidov, the officer responsible for deck equipment and a citizen of Azerbaijan, received two years and ten months. Both are unsuspended prison terms. Yle reported that the sentences were harsher than those the prosecution had requested. The two men denied any wrongdoing, and they are subject to travel restrictions.

How the damage happened

The Fitburg, registered under the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, was carrying 14 crew members of several nationalities. It had left the Russian city of St Petersburg for the port of Haifa in Israel when the damage occurred on 31 December 2025. Prosecutors said the ship was sailing with a damaged anchor that was dragged along the seabed of the Gulf of Finland for at least 130 kilometres. Two undersea telecommunications cables, operated by Elisa and Arelion Finland, were damaged along that route. Prosecutors said eight other submarine connections, including infrastructure for communications and power supply, were also put at risk, and a gas pipeline was reported to have been threatened as well. Finnish authorities seized the vessel that day and stopped it before it could continue its voyage. It was then escorted to a port near Kirkkonummi for checks. Police at the time said the ship had been dragging its anchor for hours before it was discovered.

What the court found

The defence argued that a technical fault could have caused the anchor to enter the water and that the crew did not know about it. The judges rejected that explanation and concluded that the two men had to be aware the anchor was lowered during the voyage. The court found the acts were intentional. It also accepted Finnish jurisdiction because the consequences of the damage appeared in Finland, a point that carried particular weight since part of the damage took place outside Finnish territorial waters. The damage was placed in Estonia's exclusive economic zone, and the investigation was run in coordination with Estonian authorities. The reasoning left no room for the technical-fault explanation put forward by the defence.

Earlier incidents in the Baltic

Damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea has been a concern for European authorities since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In December 2024, the tanker Eagle S, suspected of links to Russia's so-called shadow fleet, was involved in another case of damage to undersea infrastructure between Finland and Estonia. The Fitburg case is one of several incidents of damaged infrastructure in the Baltic since the invasion. Finland has stepped up its efforts to protect its undersea infrastructure.