Helsinki District Court on Tuesday began hearing the case against two crew members of the cargo ship Fitburg, which is suspected of damaging cables in the Gulf of Finland last New Year's Eve.
The preliminary investigation uncovered evidence that the Fitburg dragged a broken anchor along the seabed for at least 130 kilometers until Finnish authorities stopped the vessel.
The two defendants in the case are the Russian captain, Andrei Maksimenko, and an Azerbaijani bosun. A bosun is a senior petty officer in charge of a ship's deck crew and rigging.
They face at least two and a half years in prison if found guilty on the charges of aggravated sabotage and aggravated interference with communications networks. Both men have denied the charges.
According to prosecutors, the Fitburg damaged two telecommunications cables in Estonia's exclusive economic zone, with some of the damage also occurring in Finnish territorial waters.
This could have had serious consequences for the functioning of telecommunications, electricity, and gas networks in Finland, the prosecutor told the court.
Finnish authorities took control of the ship in the immediate aftermath of the incident on New Year's Eve. The vessel was en route from Russia to Israel, according to the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.
At the time, it was sailing under the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — a commonly-used so-called "flag of convenience", which allows a shipowner from one country to fly under the flag of another.
The case has striking similarities with the Eagle S, which is also suspected of damaging undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland — a year earlier, over Christmas 2024. In October 2025, the district court ruled that Finland does not have jurisdiction and dismissed that case, but the Appeal Court overturned that decision at the end of last month and returned it to the district court.
Henrik Ringbom, a Professor of Maritime Law at Åbo Akademi in Turku, told Yle that the district court's decision in the Eagle S case was "surprising" as it could set a precedent for any potential similar incidents in international waters.
"In practice, it would mean free game – come on in, as long as you're outside the territorial waters boundary, we won't do anything," Ringbom explained.
The issue of jurisdiction is likely to be a key factor in the Fitburg case as well, with the legal counsel for the Azerbaijani bosun telling Yle just before the hearing that this case should not be heard in a Finnish court.
