The Finnish police on Thursday boarded an oil tanker that the authorities said they suspected was involved in damaging vital undersea cables and suggested was part of a shadow fleet used by Russia to avoid Western sanctions.
The Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia, was cut on Wednesday, Finland’s police said in a statement, the latest in a slew of disruptions to undersea infrastructure that are being investigated as acts of sabotage. The Finnish authorities said Thursday that four other cables carrying data also had been damaged.
A number of other vital undersea cables have been cut in recent months, raising fears that Russia might be waging a shadow campaign against NATO nations that have supported Ukraine in the face of Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Last month, two fiber-optic cables were cut in the Baltic Sea in what Germany’s defense minister described as an act of sabotage. One cable connected Finland and Germany; the other ran between Lithuania and Sweden — all members of the NATO alliance.
Russian ships have been reported in the Baltic and North Seas near areas where critical infrastructure lies beneath the waters, and dozens of Russian tankers have begun sailing under different flags to evade sanctions.
The police in Finland called the latest cable cuts “aggravated vandalism.” In a statement on Thursday, the police said the authorities had seized the Eagle S tanker, which is registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. The ship was sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia to Port Said, Egypt, when it entered Finnish waters.
Finland’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said that while there was no direct evidence that the Eagle S was connected to Russia, the incident underscored Baltic nations’ vulnerability to potential meddling from Moscow.
“This underlies the danger of the shadow fleet in the Baltic Sea,” Mr. Orpo said at a news conference in Finland’s capital, Helsinki.
“Our main task is to find effective means to stop the shadow fleet,” Mr. Orpo added. “The shadow fleet pumps money into Russia’s war fund so that Russia can continue to wage its war in Ukraine against the people of Ukraine, and it has to be stopped.”
Mr. Orpo said at the news conference that Finnish leaders had discussed the incidents with officials from Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, NATO and the European Commission.
Estonia’s prime minister, Kristen Michal, said his government had been coordinating with Finland to respond to the cable cuts.
“Glad that we managed to act decisively and stop the suspected vessel for further investigation,” Mr. Michal wrote on X.
The cut to the Estlink 2 cable caused little disruption in Finland and Estonia. A spokeswoman for Estonia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications said there would be no impact on the public, according to the country’s public broadcaster.
However, communication services between Helsinki and the German city of Rostock were affected, according to Cinia, a digital communications company that owns the cable. It said in a statement that repairs to the cable could take several weeks.
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