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Nato is to increase its military presence in the Baltic Sea, the alliance has announced, after the suspected sabotage of an underwater power cable running between Finland and Estonia.
The Estlink 2 submarine cable was disconnected from the grid on Christmas Day, little more than a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.
Finnish authorities seized a ship on Thursday, citing suspicions that the vessel had engaged in “sabotage” to cause the Estlink 2 outage. The Eagle S, which flies under the flag of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, was en route to Port Said in Egypt.
On Friday, Finnish police said they had interrogated crew members of the Eagle S, and suspected the vessel of partaking in “aggravated criminal mischief”. Investigators believe the ship could have deliberately caused the damage by dragging its anchor along the seabed. “Had it kept going with its anchor on the seabed, more damage would have occurred,” Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, said on Friday.
Sami Rakshit, the head of Finnish customs, has said the assumption is that the Eagle S was part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” – vessels flagged to third countries that are used to transport Russian crude and other oil products that have been under embargo since the invasion of Ukraine.
“We’ve got the situation under control, and we have to continue to work together vigilantly to make sure that our critical infrastructure is not damaged by outsiders,” Stubb told a news conference on Friday. “We have agreed with Estonia, and we have also communicated to Nato secretary general Mark Rutte that our wish is to have a stronger Nato presence,” he said.
“I expressed my full solidarity and support,” Rutte posted on X on Friday, after speaking with Stubb. “Nato will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea,” he added, without giving further details.
The Estlink 2 cable could take months to repair, with an estimated finish date in August. The reduced capacity could push up electricity prices during the winter.
Estonia has already begun naval patrols in the Baltic Sea to prevent damage to another electricity cable running between Estonia and Finland. “We’ve decided to send our navy close to Estlink 1 to defend and secure our energy connection with Finland,” said the defence minister, Hanno Pevkur.
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Sweden also announced it would increase surveillance of maritime traffic in the Baltic. The country’s coastguard said it would deploy aircraft and vessels to help protect undersea infrastructure.
The Baltic nations have accused Russia of stepping up hybrid attacks on the region since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with frequent attacks on power cables, telecom lines and gas pipelines, as well a spate of arson attacks and vandalism inside European countries. Swedish police are still investigating an incident last month in which two Baltic telecoms cables were damaged. They have named a Chinese vessel that was travelling from Russia as a possible culprit.
The Finnish prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said on Thursday it was too early to say whether Russia had played any role in the latest cable damage, but the Estonian foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, said that damage to underwater installations in the area was occurring with such frequency that it was scarcely credible that all the incidents were caused by accidents.
Russia has denied involvement in numerous underwater incidents in the Baltic Sea, and has also pointed to the fact that the most dramatic incident, the sabotage of the Nordstream gas pipeline in 2022, is now considered to have been carried out by Ukraine-linked saboteurs.
