Finnish authorities seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on Thursday on suspicion of causing the rupture of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and damaging or break on four internet lines.
The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded by a Finnish coast guard team that took control and sailed the ship into Finnish waters, a coast guard official told a news conference. news
“From our side we are investigating grave damage,” said Robin Lardot, director of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation.
“According to our understanding, an anchor of the vessel under investigation has done the damage.”
Finland's customs service said it had seized the vessel's cargo and that the Eagle S was believed to belong to Russia's so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers that are trying to avoid sanctions on Russian oil sales.
Two fiber optic cables owned by the Finnish operator Elisa connecting Finland and Estonia were broken, and a third link between the two countries with Citic China was damaged, Finnish transport and communications agency Traficom said.
A fourth internet cable running between Finland and Germany and belonging to the Finnish group Cinia was believed to have been broken, the group said.
“We are coordinating closely with our allies and are ready to support their investigation,” said a spokesman for the US National Security Council, adding that the incident underscored the need for co -closer international cooperation regarding the protection of critical infrastructure under the sea.
“We are following investigations with Estonia and Finland, and we are ready to provide further support,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in a post on X social media.
The Finnish and Estonian governments held separate meetings on Thursday to assess the situation, they said in separate statements.
The Baltic Sea countries are on high alert for possible acts of sabotage following a series of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines from 2022, although undersea equipment is also subject to technical mismanagement and accidents.
The European Union said it strongly condemns any deliberate destruction of the continent's infrastructure.
“We commend the Finnish authorities for their swift action in boarding the suspect vessel,” said a joint statement from EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and the European Commission. the block's governing body.
Repairs to the 170-kilometer Estlink interconnection will take 2 months, and the stoppage raised the risk of tight power supplies during the winter, operator Fingrid said in a statement.
Estonian Prime Minister, Kristen Michal, however, said that his country would have sufficient access to electricity.
The Eagle S Panamax oil tanker crossed the Estlink 2 electricity cable at 10:26 a.m. GMT on Wednesday, a Reuters analysis of MarineTraffic vessel tracking data showed, the same time as Fingrid said the power outage occurred.
United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLCFZ, which owns the Eagle S, according to MarineTraffic data, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Peninsular Maritime, which according to MarineTraffic is the technical manager for the vessel, declined to comment outside the company's business hours.
'Cease and desist'
Damage to underwater installations in the Baltic Sea has now become so frequent that it is hard to believe that this was caused simply by an accident or bad navigation, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in a statement.
“We must understand that damage to submarine infrastructure has become more organized and therefore must be considered as attacks against our vital structures,” said Tsahkna.
The 658-megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 shutdown began at noon local Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 operating between the two countries, operator Fingrid said.
A dozen Western countries said on December 16 that they had agreed on measures to “break and block” Russia's fleet of shadow vessels to prevent sanctions violations and increase the cost of the war for Moscow in Ukraine.
“We must be able to prevent the threats from ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a post on social media X on Thursday.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Kestutis Budrys, said that the increasing number of incidents in the Baltic Sea should be a strong and urgent warning for NATO and the European Union to increase the protection of undersea infrastructure. very much.
Swedish police are leading an investigation into the disruption of two Baltic Sea telecom cables last month, which German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he believed to be sabotage. it caused.
Separately, Finnish and Estonian police are continuing to investigate damage caused last year to the Balticconnector gas pipeline connecting Finland and Estonia, as well as several telecommunications cables, and have to say that this was probably due to a ship dragging its anchor.
In 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany that ran along the seabed in the same waters was blown up, in a case that is still under investigation by Germany.
