Finnish law enforcement is investigating whether a Russian ship was involved in damaging an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia following a sudden outage on Wednesday, the police said on Thursday.
According to Finnish authorities, the damage to the Estlink 2 cable is suspected to have been caused by the vessel Eagle S, sailing under the flag of the Cook Islands, domestic outlets are reporting.
Finland is investigating the incident as aggravated vandalism. The ship’s crew was interviewed, and an inquiry was undertaken overnight.
The National Bureau of Investigation did not state whether the damage, believed to have been caused by the ship’s anchor, could have been done by accident.
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The Eagle S has previously sailed under Turkish and Indian flags, but authorities believe it belongs to Russia’s “shadow fleet” of cargo ships — vessels Russia uses to circumvent oil price caps and sanctions.
At the time of the cable damage, the vessel was carrying approximately 35,000 tonnes of unleaded petrol, according to the Finnish press.
Currently, Russian ships are barred from using EU ports, while European companies cannot offer them insurance or other services.
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A power cable linking Finland and Estonia under the Baltic Sea suffered an outage on Wednesday afternoon, the latest in a series of incidents involving damage to telecom cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said “The Estlink 2 electricity transmission connection between Finland and Estonia has been disconnected this afternoon.”
The Finnish national electricity transmission grid operator, Fingrid, said in a statement that the disruption on the EstLink 2 cable occurred at 12:26 pm local time (11:26 am CET). They assured the public that the incident would not result in power outages in Finland, stating that Helsinki had adequate supplies of power.
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Estonian network operator Elering said there was enough spare capacity to meet power needs on the Estonian side.
The head of operations at Fingrid, Arto Pahkin, told Finnish broadcaster Yle at the time that “possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out”.
The Baltic Sea has witnessed multiple infrastructure incidents since the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Authorities have been on edge regarding undersea infrastructure in the Baltic region. In November, two data cables, one running between Finland and Germany and another between Lithuania and Sweden, were severed.
Before that, a Finnish-Estonian undersea gas pipeline was damaged in October as a Chinese cargo ship reportedly dropped its anchor.
The Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, which once brought natural gas from Russia to Germany, was damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022. Authorities then suspected the move to also be sabotage, going further and launching criminal probes.
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