Latvian police are interrogating the crew of a suspicious ship believed responsible for damaging a fiber-optic cable near Liepāja on January 2. The vessel was inspected in harbor without detention. This follows an earlier report on the incident and comes amid repeated Baltic Sea cable damages.
Following the initial report earlier today, Latvian authorities have advanced their investigation into the January 2 damage to a private company's fiber-optic cable in territorial waters off Liepāja, Latvia's third-largest city on the Baltic coast north of Lithuania.
Prime Minister Evika Siliņa confirmed the damage, noting no impact on Latvian communications users. Marine analysis shows the suspicious ship first passed over an inactive cable before altering course toward the affected one, which links Šventoji in Lithuania to Liepāja, spanning about 65 kilometers.
Police examined the ship in Liepāja harbor, with the crew cooperating fully; no arrests or seizures have occurred. The probe continues to establish the cause.
This marks the second Baltic Sea cable incident within a week, after a New Year's Eve damage to an Estonia-Finland data cable, where Finnish authorities seized a Russia-bound ship suspected of anchor sabotage. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, such damages have raised suspicions of hybrid attacks attributed to Russia.
