OSLO, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Latvian police have found no links between a ship at the Liepaja port and the damage to an underwater telecom cable connecting Latvia to Lithuania. However, they are continuing their investigation into the incident, authorities announced on Monday.

The Baltic Sea region is on high alert due to multiple outages of power cables, telecom links, and gas pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. In response, NATO has increased its military presence by deploying frigates, aircraft, and naval drones.

The most recent outage involved a cable owned by the Swedish fiber optics company Arelion and occurred on Friday near Liepaja. Investigators announced on Sunday that they had boarded a ship and opened criminal proceedings, but the name of the vessel was not disclosed.

SHIP AND ANCHOR CHECKED

This incident happened just four days after Finnish police detained a ship traveling from Russia to Israel, suspecting it of damaging an Elisa telecom cable that connects Finland and Estonia by dragging its anchor.

Arelion confirmed on Monday that one of its cables connecting Finland and Estonia was damaged on December 31, and that another cable from Estonia to Sweden ceased to function on December 30, as reported earlier.

“All three cables are completely severed,” said a spokesperson for Arelion in an email. Each case is currently under investigation.

“We hope to restore the first cable within a few days, with the remaining cables expected to be fixed within one to two weeks.”

MarineTraffic tracking data indicates that four ships crossed over the Lithuania-Latvia cable heading to Liepaja port on January 2, the day of the latest incident. On Monday, three of those ships were still at the port.

Latvian police reported that they had inspected a ship in Liepaja, looked at its anchor, technical equipment, and logs, and noted that the crew had cooperated willingly.

“Currently, the information from the criminal case does not suggest that this specific ship is connected to the damage of the optical cable,” a statement from the national police said.