A Russian ship from the so-called sanctioned “shadow fleet” was performing “suspicious manoeuvres” near an electricity cable connecting Poland to Sweden, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on social network X on May 21.
“after the effective intervention of our military, the vessel sailed towards one of the Russian ports,” Tusk wrote, adding that a Polish Navy reconnaissance ship was on its way to the scene.
Over the past year and a half, there have been many incidents in the Baltic Sea during which telecoms and electricity cables, as well as gas pipelines, have been damaged.
While it is often difficult to identify the culprits behind the incidents, and some of them may indeed have been accidental, some European officials point to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet.”
This refers to some 350 vessels with opaque ownership structures that are believed to circumvent Western sanctions on Russian oil by transporting about 80 per cent of the shipments, with nearly 50 per cent leaving Russian ports in the Baltic Sea.