BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Captains of ships that damage underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea such as telecoms cables or pipelines should be put under EU sanctions to deter such acts, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Thursday.
Sikorski said Poland, which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, wanted the proposal to be part of the next, 16th package of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, which is now under discussion among EU governments.
The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, all caused by ships dragging anchors on the seabed to rip up infrastructure.
“I find it frustrating that the freedom of navigation is taken advantage of by these old ships registered under flags of convenience in tax havens,” Sikorski told reporters in Brussels.
“These ships are uninsured or have insurance that cannot be actually activated. And when they are in international waters, they can’t even be stopped and searched. Because dropping your anchor in international waters is not a crime under the Convention (on the Law of the Sea), even when it damages something,” he said.
NATO recently boosted its Baltic presence with frigates, aircraft and naval drones to prevent damaging actions, which are often caused by ships with Russian or Chinese crews.
Sikorski said Russian warships and spy ships “seem to be mapping undersea infrastructure, not only in the Baltics, but also in the North Sea, so what we’re seeing now might be just a prelude for worse things to come”.
“We have asked EU authorities to start sanctioning the crews of the ships. We have their names because they put in at European ports. When they do damage and don’t stop and don’t explain themselves, they can be put on individual sanctions lists … It should act as a deterrent from doing something similar,” he said.
(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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