Finland jails Russian captain and Azerbaijani crewman for Baltic cable sabotage

The Helsinki District Court on Thursday, 5 November, convicted two seamen of the cargo ship Fitburg of aggravated sabotage over damage to two undersea telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland, Reuters and The Moscow Times reported.

The sentences

• The Russian captain, Andrey Maksimenko, received 3 years and 6 months in prison.
• An Azerbaijani crew member (the ship’s boatswain), Vusal Madzhidov, received 2 years and 10 months.
• They were ordered to jointly pay about €1.9 million in damages; the captain must pay another €85,000.

According to the Russian service of The Moscow Times, citing Yle, the sentences were harsher than the 2.5 years requested by the prosecutor.

What happened

Finland seized the Fitburg on 31 December 2025 while it was sailing from St Petersburg to Haifa, Israel, with a cargo of structural steel. The court said the two men acted intentionally when the ship dragged its anchor chain along the seabed for about 130 km, damaging two cables of Finnish operator Elisa running towards Estonia. Prosecutors said several other subsea links, including power lines and gas pipelines, were also put at risk.

The defence

Both men denied wrongdoing and challenged Finland’s jurisdiction; the captain will appeal, his lawyers said. Russia’s ambassador Pavel Kuznetsov has argued that Helsinki presented no real evidence and that the case should fall under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, since the damage occurred outside Finnish territorial waters.