• Military
• Russia
• Elisabeth Braw

October 10, 2025, 1:25 PM View Comments ()

Case dismissed! At Helsinki District Court, a pivotal trial involving three international seafarers has just ended. The three officers were in charge of the shadow tanker that struck at least five undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland in December 2024. Now, the court has delivered its verdict in the high-profile case: Although it found the officers committed aggravated criminal damage, it ruled that Finland lacked jurisdiction to prosecute them. That means ships can cut cables with impunity almost everywhere.

Or least they can for now. Prosecutors have just announced they’ll appeal the ruling, giving further hope to those who want to see accountability prevail.

You may recall the dramatic scene on Christmas Day last year: Finnish border guard and police officers abseiling, in the dark, onto the Eagle S. The scene took place in the Gulf of Finland, where, in just a few hours, the tanker had struck one undersea power cable and four data cables. When the Finnish border guard and police intervened, the Eagle S was approaching another power cable. Had the Finns done nothing, the shadow tanker—which was en route from Russia’s Baltic port of Ust-Luga—could have struck not just that cable but more data cables, too.

Seizing the tanker was a daring move. The Cook Islands-flagged Eagle S belongs to Russia’s shadow fleet, a collection of vessels that transports Russian oil to countries like India and China in violation of the Western price cap on Russian oil. That makes the fleet indispensable to Russia. The Finns knew that if they tried to seize the tanker, Russia might retaliate in some fashion.

And there was another problem: When the Finns seized the Eagle S, the ship was in Finland’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and the damage done was in its EEZ, too. In their own territorial waters, which extend for a maximum of 12 nautical miles from the shoreline, countries have full jurisdiction, but that’s not the case in a country’s EEZ. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) decreed that in their economic zones, coastal states only have “sovereign rights” for the purpose of specific economic and environmental activities.

Having police and border guard officers detain a ship in the EEZ and move it to territorial waters was assertive and, in the eyes of some, not entirely legal. But as far as the Finns were concerned, they had to stop the Eagle S before it caused even more damage to the indispensable installations on the seabed. When they took control of the tanker, it had dragged its anchor for nearly 62 miles, and the Baltic Sea had endured more than two years of mysterious incidents involving cables and pipelines.

In August, the ship’s captain and two senior officers were charged with aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications and trial proceedings began the same month. Given that the cables were struck in the EEZ, the fact that there was a trial at all was a sign of Finland’s determination. It was also a gamble because the prosecutors would need to prove the officers’ intention to perpetrate harm. Would the Finnish prosecutors be able to demonstrate that the crew deliberately dragged the anchor? If they managed to overcome both the issue of jurisdiction and the issue of intent, other countries affected by cable incidents could decide to pursue the same strategy.

On the trial’s first day, the three officers maintained their innocence, arguing that damage to the cables was an accident and a malfunctioning windlass had caused the anchor to fall into the water. The Eagle S is indeed a rusty old bucket, owned—like virtually all shadow vessels—by a brass-plate company. In the Eagle S’s case, the owner lists the business center at a Dubai hotel as its address. Finnish journalists managed to identify the owner: a Russian-speaking woman who had an Azerbaijani passport and owned at least seven front companies.

As the trial proceeded, the prosecutors delivered a mighty surprise. They were not going to address whether the three officers had deliberately dragged the ship’s anchor. Instead, they argued that by boarding a ship so unseaworthy that the windlass—which holds the anchor—could malfunction, the three men had demonstrated intent to cause harm. It was a clever way around the seemingly unsolvable dilemma of how to prove the intent to damage the cables. The prosecutors presented an innovative approach to the jurisdiction issue, too: Because the consequences of the criminal acts materialized in Finland, the country had jurisdiction.

The prosecution delivered astounding facts. The tanker’s black box stopped recording its position just before the tanker hit Estlink2, the power cable. And on Jan. 7, when the Eagle S and its crew were being held in Finland, the ship’s management company—based in a small shared office building in suburban Mumbai—instructed the captain to destroy evidence. “Don’t share this list with anyone, please. Destroy it. Because they will come back and demand compensation from you for all the damage,” the company told the captain—neither realized that Finnish police were listening in.

On Sept. 10, the trial ended. The prosecutors had demanded prison sentences of at least two and a half years. That may not sound like a lot, especially considering that the December incident has cost the cables’ owners at least 60 million euros. But a lot was at stake, including the crucial point of whether boarding a rust bucket is tantamount to intent to damage undersea installations. If the court agreed with the prosecutors both on the officers’ guilt and the matter of jurisdiction, then it could create a significant deterrent against cable cuts.

On Oct. 3, the court delivered its verdict. The dragged anchor, it ruled, caused “very serious economic losses within the meaning of the statutory definition of the offense pursued by the alternative charge, i.e. aggravated criminal damage, which were incurred in Finland.” The prosecutors had convinced the court on the matter of intent, but it ruled that it was “not possible to apply Finnish criminal law to the case.” In other words, Finland lacked jurisdiction.

With UNCLOS clearly distinguishing between territorial and non-territorial waters, the verdict was not entirely surprising. But it is concerning all the same. Finland tried to thwart cable incidents using the rule of law, and it failed. Countries may have a new legal tool against any sabotage that happens in their territorial waters. But if the upcoming appeal fails, prospective cable and pipeline saboteurs will be able to safely damage cables and pipelines so long as they stay outside of anyone’s territorial waters.