It is possible that the ship “Vezhen“ really severed the underwater communication cable between Gotland and Latvia“. This was announced to the media in Varna by Capt. Alexander Kalchev, the executive director of “Parakhodstvo Bulgarian Sea Fleet“ - owner of the vessel, quoted by economic.bg.
However, he is categorical that there can be no question of intentional actions on the part of the crew.
The reason for his statement was the information from the Swedish Prosecutor's Office that a preliminary investigation has been launched on suspicion of “sabotage“ and has ordered the detention of a ship in the Baltic Sea, suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland.
Kalchev said that the ship sailed on the evening of January 25 in extremely bad weather - southwest winds with a force of over 25 meters per second.
There the wave is short and quite high“, Kalchev explained.
According to information from the crew, during the storm one of the ship's anchors “leaked“ - that is, when the waves hit it, the stoppers were damaged and the anchor sank. After which the ship began to drag it along the bottom, which could have caused the incident with the broken cable.
In the morning at around 8:30 a.m. Bulgarian time, when the wind dropped, the crew went out on deck to inspect for damage and found the “leak“.
Kalchev added that according to the automatic ship identification system, “Vezhen“ did indeed pass over the cable, but when exactly it was cut has not been definitively clarified. According to him, the ship's movement should be recorded at the moment of the cut in order to confirm that this ship was at fault.
But I say again – "There can be no question of it in any way, at least I don't think there could be people on board who would act deliberately to cause such damage," Kalchev said.
According to him, the incident occurred at 0:45 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), or 2:45 Bulgarian time.
The ship's crew consists of eight Bulgarians, who are the officers, and nine Myanmar citizens from the executive staff.
Yesterday, the ship was approached by the Swedish coast guard and asked to head towards their territorial waters, he also said.
Armed representatives boarded the ship, who even behaved a little aggressively," Kalchev explained.
He added that at the moment, some kind of inspection of the vessel is expected to begin to determine whether it is perpetrator.
I hope that the investigators will quickly establish that this is not a deliberate act, but a technical incident due to bad weather and that the ship will be released“, said Capt. Kalchev.
He specified that the vessel is currently at anchor in Swedish territorial waters and information is being awaited on when the investigating authorities will board.
In response to a question, Capt. Kalchev said that there is information from the media about another vessel that was in the area at the time of the incident.
The vessel “Vezhen“ was sailing to South America, loaded with fertilizers. The vessel is new, launched in 2022, 32,000 tons. The captain of the ship is Anton Atanasov, 41 years old, Kalchev also said.
Source: economic.bg