Finnish border guards and police boarded and took control this Thursday in the Baltic Sea of a ship linked to Russia suspected of damaging an underwater electricity cable and four other fiber optic cables for data transmission. The intercepted ship is the Eagle Sa tanker registered in the Cook Islands that, according to Finnish authorities, is part of the Russian clandestine fleet with which the Kremlin tries to avoid Western sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine. The damaged cables, which connect Finland with Estonia and Germany, stopped working around midday on Wednesday. The incident of Eagle Swhich remains anchored off the coast and escorted by a Finnish patrol ship, joins other recent ones in the Baltic that have been described by senior European officials as acts of sabotage and framed in “the shadow war” that Russia is waging with West in northern Europe.
“We are investigating serious sabotage,” said Robin Lardot, director of the Finnish National Investigation Office at a press conference in Helsinki. “As we understand, an anchor on the vessel under investigation has caused the damage,” the police officer added. Sami Rahskit, director general of Customs, added in the media appearance that everything indicates that the Eagle SIt is part of “Russia’s shadow fleet”, made up of hundreds of aging vessels, with or without the flag of the Eurasian country, with which Moscow illegally exports millions of barrels of oil.
After meeting with Lardot and other senior police and border guard officials, Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, posted on the social network X: “We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian ghost fleet.” . Petteri Orpo, the Finnish Prime Minister, stated in a public speech: “Shadow fleets pose a great risk to other states in the Baltic Sea and the rest of the European Union.” The conservative politician has stressed that Finland “wants to tackle this problem as soon as possible and the Government is doing everything possible to solve it.”
For his part, the Estonian Prime Minister, Kristen Michal, urged this Thursday afternoon to increase the level of monitoring and protection of European critical infrastructure, although he added that “communication services are guaranteed: the use of the internet is not will be affected.” Michal, who, after an emergency meeting of the Estonian Government, appeared at a press conference alongside the Minister of the Interior, Lauri Läänemets, highlighted that he has held telephone conversations with Orpo, his Finnish counterpart, and with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance. Shortly after, Rutte published in X: “NATO stands in solidarity with its allies and condemns any attack against critical infrastructure. “We are following the investigations of Estonia and Finland and are ready to provide further support.”
In addition to Estlink2, an undersea electricity cable that stretches about 170 kilometers and connects Finland to Estonia, four other data transmission cables were damaged in the same area on Christmas Day. Three of the affected fiber optic cables also connect both countries; two are owned by the Finnish operator Elisa and one of them by the Chinese company Citic, while the fourth internet cable that has stopped working runs along the seabed from the coast of Finland to that of Germany, as reported by the Finnish agency. transportation and communications.
The crew of the Eagle S — currently anchored off the coast of Porkkala, about 30 kilometers from Helsinki — is being questioned by Finnish authorities. At the moment no information has been released about the nationalities of the sailors. The movements of the tanker, which was heading from Russia to Egypt loaded with crude oil, coincide in time and space with the breakage of the five cables in the Gulf of Finland, according to the British newspaper Financial Times.
Sanctions against the Russian shadow fleet
In a joint statement with the European Commission, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Kaja Kallas, has condemned any “deliberate destruction” of European critical infrastructure and has announced that she is working with the Finnish authorities in the investigation and that she will propose sanctions. against the Russian shadow fleet, reports Silvia Ayuso from Brussels. “The suspicious ship is part of the Russian ghost fleet that threatens security and the environment, while helping Russia finance its war budget,” the statement said. “We will propose more measures, including sanctions, against this fleet,” advances Brussels, which welcomes in this sense the “quick action” of the Finnish authorities in boarding the ship suspected of having caused the damage and expresses its “solidarity” with the affected countries. —Finland, Estonia and Germany—, although he emphasizes that, for the moment, “the region’s electricity supply is not in danger.”
The episode of Eagle S It comes at a time when the Baltic littoral states are on high alert against what they consider “hybrid war actions” orchestrated by the Kremlin. A little over a month ago, the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3Two fiber optic cables broke their anchor in less than 24 hours, one that connects Sweden and Lithuania and another that links Finland with Germany. After spending almost 30 days anchored and escorted in the Kattegat Strait, between the coasts of Sweden and Denmark, the Yi Peng 3It left last Saturday for the Egyptian port of Port Said without the Chinese authorities allowing the Swedish prosecutor in charge of the investigation access to the ship. In October last year, another Chinese ship, the container ship polar beardamaged the Balticonnector, an underwater gas pipeline that also connects Finland and Estonia, with its anchor.
