Finnish authorities on Thursday detained a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion that it caused an outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia the previous day, and that it had also damaged or broken four internet cables.
The Cook Islands-registered ship, named Eagle S by authorities, was aboard a Finnish patrol team that took command of the vessel into Finnish waters, a coast guard official said at a press conference.
“For our part, we are investigating the vandalism of the graves,” said Robin Lardot, director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation.
“According to our understanding, the anchor of the vessel under investigation caused damage.”
Finland’s transport department says it has seized the vessel’s cargo and the Eagle S is believed to belong to a Russian shadow group of aging tankers seeking to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil.
Two of Finnish company Elisa’s fiber optic cables connecting Finland and Estonia broke, and a third link between the two countries owned by China Citic was damaged, Finnish transport and communications agency Traficom said.
A fourth internet cable operating between Finland and Germany and owned by Finnish group Cinia is believed to have been cut, the agency said.
“We are working closely with our partners and are ready to support their investigation,” said a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, adding that the incident underscores the need for international cooperation in protecting critical infrastructure under the sea.
“We are following the investigation carried out by Estonia and Finland, and we are ready to provide further assistance,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in a post on social media platform X.
Both the Finnish and Estonian governments held extraordinary 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 the disruption of power lines, telecom links and gas pipelines from 2022, although subsea equipment is also subject to technical malfunctions and accidents.
The European Union has said it strongly condemns any deliberate destruction of the continent’s infrastructure.
“We commend the Finnish authorities for their swift action to board the suspect vessel,” said a joint statement by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body.
Repairs to the 170km Estlink 2 link will take months, and the outage poses a risk of winter blackouts, operator Fingrid said in a statement.
Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said that her country will continue to have sufficient electricity.
The Eagle S Panamax oil tanker crossed the Estlink 2 power cable at 10:26 am GMT on Wednesday, a Reuters review of MarineTraffic ship tracking data showed, around the same time as Fingrid said the power went out.
United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLCFZ, according to MarineTraffic data the owner of the Eagle S, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Peninsular Maritime, which according to MarineTraffic acts as the vessel’s technical manager, declined to comment outside of the company’s business hours.
‘Raise and prevent’
Damage to submarines in the Baltic Sea is now so common that it is hard to believe that this is due to an accident or a poor ship, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in a statement.
“We must understand that the damage to the submarine infrastructure is very systematic and therefore it must be considered as an attack on our important structures,” said Tsahkna.
The outage of the 658-megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 began at noon local time on Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 operating between the two countries, operator Fingrid said.
12 Western countries on December 16 said they had agreed on measures to “disrupt and deter” Russia’s so-called shadow fleet to prevent violations and increase the cost to Moscow of the war in Ukraine.
“We must be able to avoid the danger posed by Russian naval vessels,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb in a post on social media X on Thursday.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said that the growing number of incidents in the Baltic Sea should be a strong and urgent warning to NATO and the European Union to significantly improve the protection of undersea infrastructure there.
Swedish police are leading an investigation into the breach of two Baltic Sea telephone lines last month, which German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he believed to be sabotage.
Separately, Finnish and Estonian police are continuing to investigate damage caused last year to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia, as well as several telephone lines, which they said may have been caused by a ship dragging an anchor.
In 2022 the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline in the same waters was blown up, in a case still being investigated by Germany.