A Russia-linked ship carrying oil in the Baltic Sea was seized on Thursday by Finnish authorities on suspicion it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke several data cables.
Finnish police and border guards boarded the vessel, the Eagle S, early Thursday and took over the command bridge, Helsinki Police Chief Jari Liukku said at a news conference. The vessel was being held in Finnish territorial waters, police said.
The Eagle S is flagged in the Cook Islands, but was described by Finnish customs officials as a suspected part of Russia's shadow fleet of fuel tankers, Yle television reported. Those are aging vessels with obscure ownership, acquired to evade Western sanctions amid the war in Ukraine and operating without Western-regulated insurance.
The Eagle S anchor is suspected of causing damage to the cable, Yle reported, relying on police statements.
The Estlink-2 power cable, which brings electricity from Finland to Estonia across the Baltic Sea, went down on Wednesday.
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for potential acts of sabotage following a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since 2022, although subsea equipment is also subject to technical malfunction and accidents.
Repairing the 170-km (106-mile) Estlink 2 interconnector will take months, and the outage raised the risk of power shortages during the winter, operator Fingrid said in a statement.
Two fiber-optic cables owned by Finnish operator Elisa linking Finland and Estonia were broken, while a third link between the two countries owned by China's Citic 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 also believed to have been severed, the agency said.
The Eagle S Panamax oil tanker crossed the Estlink 2 electricity cable at 1026 GMT on Wednesday, according to MarineTraffic ship tracking data, identical to the time when Fingrid said the power outage had occurred.
The ship was stationary near the Finnish coast on Thursday afternoon, with a Finnish patrol vessel stopped nearby, the data showed.
"From our side, we are investigating grave sabotage," Robin Lardot, director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, said on Thursday.
"According to our understanding, an anchor of the vessel that is under investigation has caused the damage," he added.
Estonia's government was holding an extraordinary meeting on the issue Thursday, Prime Minister Kristen Michal said on social media platform X. Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina said she was in close touch with Michal and Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo.
"Our armed forces have strengthened surveillance and are monitoring the situation,” she said on X. "The Baltic states currently have sufficient energy production capacity, although we are challenged by the Baltic Sea cable incidents.”
Two data cables – one running between Finland and Germany and the other between Lithuania and Sweden – were severed in November.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that officials had to assume the incident was "sabotage," but he didn't provide evidence or say who might have been responsible. The remark came during a speech in which he discussed hybrid warfare threats from Russia.
Damage to subsea installations in the Baltic Sea has now become so frequent that it is difficult to believe this was caused merely by accident or poor seamanship, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in a statement.
"We must understand that damage to submarine infrastructure has become more systematic and thus must be regarded as attacks against our vital structures," Tsahkna said.
The 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 outage began at midday local time on Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 in operation between the two countries, operator Fingrid said.
Twelve Western countries on Dec. 16 said they had agreed on measures to "disrupt and deter" Russia's so-called shadow fleet of vessels in order to prevent sanctions breaches and increase the cost to Moscow of the war in Ukraine.
"We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet," Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a post on X on Thursday.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said the growing number of Baltic Sea incidents should serve as a stark and urgent warning to NATO and the European Union to significantly enhance the protection of undersea infrastructure there.
Police in Sweden are leading an investigation into last month's breach of two Baltic Sea telecom cables.
Separately, Finnish and Estonian police continue to investigate damage caused last year to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia, as well as several telecom cables and have said this was likely caused by a ship dragging its anchor.
The Nord Stream pipelines that once brought natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022. Authorities have said the cause was sabotage and launched criminal investigations.
Estonian network operator Elering says there was enough spare capacity to meet power needs on the Estonian side, public broadcaster ERR said on its website.
