Helsinki jailed a captain for cable sabotage; Lenta rendered the same sentence as ‘grave damage’

Full analysis

What happened Why it matters How each country tells it Where accounts conflict Room for disagreement Our assessment Sources and evidence

What happened

On 5 November, Helsinki District Court sentenced two merchant seamen to prison for dragging their ship’s anchor across the Gulf of Finland seabed. The Fitburg’s Russian captain, Andrei Maksimenko, received three years and six months; its Azerbaijani boatswain, Vusal Majidov, two years and ten months — both for aggravated sabotage, and both named by Yle, the Finnish public broadcaster, which says it is naming them because the case is of significant public interest.

The offences happened on the morning of 31 December 2025, while the Fitburg was under way from St Petersburg to the Israeli port of Haifa. According to the court’s findings as reported by Yle, the ship dragged its anchor along the seabed for about 130 kilometres over several hours, severing two subsea telecommunications cables between Finland and Estonia and putting a further seven cables and a gas pipeline at risk. Latvia’s LSM, relaying Yle, adds that the investigation proved the anchor’s fixation mechanism was in working order and that the anchor was raised only after Finnish authorities noticed the drag and alerted the ship — a detail that refutes the defence claim, carried by Ukraine’s Glavkom, that the anchor was faulty and the crew followed the Finnish coast guard’s instructions. Glavkom also reports investigators matched the drag track to the ship’s route and obtained video of the anchor chain being raised.

Both men denied the charges and asked the court to dismiss them. The court nonetheless ruled the two must have known the anchor was down while the ship moved at sea over that distance and hours, making the offences intentional and establishing Finnish jurisdiction. It ordered both into immediate custody and to jointly pay for cable and pipeline repairs and investigation costs; Azerbaijan’s APA puts the compensation at approximately €1.9 million, relaying Euronews. LSM reports the sentence went beyond what the prosecution requested: two years and six months for each. The ruling is not final and can be appealed, and APA reports the captain is planning to appeal. The Fitburg is a 132-metre cargo ship flying the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines, with a crew of 14 that included eight Russians; the ship itself left Finland in January, but several crew members were banned from leaving, LSM notes.

The case sits inside a pattern that has repeatedly punctured the Baltic over the past two years. Yle notes the Fitburg case has striking similarities with the Eagle S, the vessel suspected of damaging cables over Christmas 2024. LSM supplies the fuller geography: the EstLink 2 power link damaged in December 2024, two cables cut in Swedish territorial waters in November 2024, the NATO operation Baltic Sentry launched in January 2025, and damage to Latvia’s own undersea fibre cable in January 2026.

Why it matters

The sentence marks the point where accountability for hybrid infrastructure attacks becomes individual prison time rather than detentions and sanctions. Two named men will serve years and jointly pay around €1.9 million. Just as consequential is the court’s reasoning on its own authority: Finland could try the case, Yle reports, because the offences were intentional and their effects were felt in Finland, even though Glavkom reports the damage lay mostly in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone. That is a jurisdiction finding written for a shadow fleet that has made the anchor-drag a technique. And because the conviction is for aggravated sabotage rather than an accident of navigation, the court has fixed in law what the defendants contest: that the cable cuts were an act a person chose. Yet the verdict reaches only the hands, not the operators who direct them — the shadow fleet’s owners and hirers were never before this court — and the two seamen’s appeals remain.

How each country tells it

• 🇫🇮
  yle.fi · Finland · original reporting

  The Finnish public broadcaster’s English service reports the Helsinki District Court ruling as a domestic criminal-justice outcome, naming both defendants for public interest and detailing the court’s findings on jurisdiction, intent and the 130-kilometre anchor drag without geopolitical framing.
• 🇷🇺
  Lenta.ru · Russia · carries Yle

  The most deflationary framing in the set: the headline records only that a verdict was handed down, with the words guilt and sabotage never appearing, while the text relays Yle’s conviction details and renders the charge as grave damage rather than sabotage.
• 🇱🇻
  LSM (Latvijas Sabiedriskie Mediji) · Latvia · carries Yle

  Latvia’s public broadcaster frames the verdict as a regional security precedent for undersea infrastructure, using it to open an extensive context on the shadow fleet, EstLink 2, NATO’s Baltic Sentry and the damage to Latvia’s own cable.
• 🇦🇿
  APA News Agency (Azeri-Press) · Azerbaijan · carries Euronews

  Baku’s agency leads with its own citizen, the Azerbaijani boatswain sentenced to two years and ten months, and is the only source carrying the approximately €1.9 million joint compensation figure, relaying Euronews.
• 🇺🇦
  Glavkom · Ukraine · carries Yle

  Ukraine’s outlet reads the verdict as hybrid-war accountability, a Russian captain actually jailed for infrastructure sabotage, and supplies evidentiary detail: video of the anchor chain being raised, a drag track matching the ship’s route, damage mostly in Estonia’s EEZ, and EU envoy Kaja Kallas thanking Finland.

Where accounts conflict

The sharpest divergence is what the men were convicted of, in the words each outlet chose. Yle reports ‘aggravated sabotage’; APA, relaying Euronews, writes of ‘the sabotage of undersea cables’; Glavkom renders the charge as deliberate damage to underwater infrastructure and disruption of telecom networks. Lenta, Russia’s state-aligned outlet, renders the charge as ‘тяжкое причинение ущерба’ — grave causing of damage — and its article never uses the word sabotage. A Russian reader is handed a different offence in the same sentence. The second conflict is carried piecemeal between the defence and the court. Glavkom alone reports the defence argument that the anchor was faulty and the crew followed Finnish coast guard instructions; LSM alone reports the investigation’s finding that the mechanism was functional and raised only after Finnish authorities alerted the ship; Yle carries the court’s answer — the men must have known the anchor was down over 130 kilometres and hours. No single article in the set lays out all three.

Room for disagreement

The strongest case against the verdict holding is that it rests on a novel jurisdiction claim and is under appeal. Yle notes the ruling is not final; APA reports the captain plans to appeal. Glavkom carries the defence argument that the anchor was faulty and the crew followed Finnish coast guard instructions, and that the damage lay mostly in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone. If an appellate court reads the territorial question differently, the conviction falls before the facts are examined. The sentence’s excess over the prosecution’s request, reported only by LSM, gives the defence one more argument to make. And the men in the dock are the hands, not the operators — convicting a captain and a boatswain has not touched the shadow fleet’s owners, who were never before this court. Baltic cable security does not rest on two seamen.