Finnish court jails Fitburg captain and bosun for dragging anchor across Baltic cables
The anchor crossed nine cables and a gas pipeline over 130 km, and the crew owe about €1.9m in damages
Helsinki District Court has sentenced the Russian captain and the Azerbaijani bosun of the general cargo ship Fitburg to prison for deliberately damaging two submarine telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland with the ship's dragging anchor. Captain Andrei Maksimenko received three years and six months and bosun Vusal Majidov two years and 10 months on 5 November. Both were taken into custody immediately. The ruling is not final.
The case dates from 31 December 2025, when the 9,822 dwt Fitburg, flagged in St Vincent and the Grenadines, was on passage from St Petersburg to Haifa. The court found that she dragged her anchor chain and anchor shank across about 130 km of seabed, crossing nine telecommunications and power cables and one gas pipeline. Two cables belonging to Elisa and Arelion Finland were damaged, and the other seven cables and the pipeline were put at risk.
What did the court find?
The anchor had been raised when Fitburg left St Petersburg on 30 December and its securing mechanism worked. It was lowered before the ship left Russian territorial waters. The court concluded that both men must have known the anchor was down while the ship was under way, and that Majidov helped keep her moving with the anchor deployed for about two hours after Finnish authorities first contacted the crew.
The two men were ordered to pay about €1.9m jointly in compensation, with Maksimenko liable for a further €85,000. A separate charge of aggravated interference with telecommunications was dismissed because the conduct was already covered by the conviction for aggravated criminal damage. Both denied wrongdoing and challenged Finnish jurisdiction on the grounds that the damage occurred outside territorial waters. The court rejected that argument, finding that the intentional offences had consequences in Finland. Maksimenko intends to appeal; Majidov has not yet decided.
Finnish authorities intercepted the ship on 31 December and escorted her to Kantvik, west of Helsinki, before releasing her. She was renamed Finex in March 2026. Her 14 crew came from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 9 November 2026.
