Finnish authorities said Thursday, December 26, they are investigating an oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port for the "sabotage" of a power cable linking Finland and Estonia that was damaged the previous day.
On Christmas Day, the Estlink 2 submarine cable that carries electricity from Finland to Estonia was disconnected from the grid, just over a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.
Robin Lardot of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation said a probe for "aggravated sabotage" had been opened into the oil tanker Eagle S, that sails under the flag of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. "The assumption at the moment is that it is a shadow fleet vessel and the cargo was unleaded petrol loaded in a Russian port," said Sami Rakshit from Director General of Finnish Customs.
The shadow fleet refers to the ships which transport embargoed Russian crude and oil products. "We monitored the situation closely yesterday" with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Finnish President Alexander Stubb on X. "The risks posed by the Russian shadow fleet must be ruled out," he added. The Eagle S is bound for Port Said in Egypt.
Police suspect that the oil tanker's anchor might have damaged the power cable. "Our patrol vessel traveled to the area and could determine visually that the vessel's anchor was missing," Markku Hassinen of the Finnish Border Guard told a news conference. "So there is a clear reason to suspect something strange happened," he added.
Tensions have mounted around the Baltic since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In September 2022, a series of underwater blasts ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe, the cause of which has yet to be determined.
In October 2023, an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down after it was damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship.
Early on November 17 this year, the Arelion telecommunications cable running from the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania was damaged. Te next day, the C-Lion 1 submarine cable connecting Helsinki and the German port of Rostock was cut south of Sweden's Oland island. Suspicions concerning the November 17 incident focused on a Chinese-flagged vessel, the Yi Peng 3, which was in the area at the time. Sweden said Monday that China had denied a request for prosecutors to conduct an investigation on the vessel and that it had left the area.
European officials have said they suspect several of the incidents are sabotage linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with the Kremlin dismissing this as "absurd" and "laughable".