Poland intervenes after Russian 'shadow fleet' ship detected near Baltic Sea cable
The Polish military intervened in the Baltic Sea after a Russian ship carried out "suspicious manoeuvres" near a power cable connecting Poland and Sweden, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday.
"A Russian ship from the 'shadow fleet' covered by sanctions performed suspicious maneuvers near the power cable connecting Poland with Sweden," Tusk wrote on X.
"After the effective intervention of our military, the ship sailed to one of the Russian ports."
The term "shadow fleet" is used to describe ships Russia operates under concealed means to evade sanctions.
Western countries say that Moscow is using hundreds of tankers under opaque ownership to ferry Russian oil around the world despite Western sanctions against them.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters later on Wednesday that a patrol flight scared the Russian ship away, and that the Polish navy's ORP Heweliusz sailed to the scene to investigate further, according to local media.
An emergency meeting will be held on Thursday with Tusk in attendance, reports said.
"This shows how dangerous the times we live in are, how serious the situation in the Baltic Sea is," Kosiniak-Kamysz told a news conference.
Moscow has publicly not commented on the incident.
The 600-megawatt undersea cable targeted links Poland and Sweden and allows electricity grids in both countries to benefit from cheap cross-border power supplies.
Some of the vessels Russia's "shadow fleet" have been implicated in previous damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
In December 2024, Finnish police seized the Eagle S, a tanker thought to be part of the fleet, on suspicion it used its anchor to damage an undersea power cable supplying electricity from Finland to Estonia. Russia has denied any role in the damage.
Nevertheless, NATO has stepped up its security in the region following a string of incidents in which power cables and gas pipelines have been damaged in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Estonia warned last week that Russia was willing to protect its shadow fleet of ageing tankers with military force. That came after Estonia recently intercepted a suspicious vessel in its waters.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said that Russia would defend its ships in the Baltic Sea using "all means" at its disposal.
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