Finnish authorities have discovered anchor drag marks running for several kilometers across the Baltic seabed as they probe the recent severing of important power and internet cables.
“With the underwater operations, we have been able to identify the dragging track at the seabed from the beginning to the end,” said Detective Chief Inspector Sami Paila of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation in a Sunday press release. “The track is dozens of kilometers in length. For the time being, the possible location where the anchor came off has not been established.”
The announcement marks the latest in a series of similar incidents in recent months and comes as NATO warns of a growing threat of unconventional Russian attacks in the region.
The underwater Estlink 2 power cable linking Finland and Estonia was damaged last Wednesday, along with several data cables. Estonia’s power supply was significantly reduced because of the damage.
On Thursday, Finnish police and coast guard officers boarded the Eagle S, a Cook Islands-registered tanker carrying Russian oil from the port of Ust-Luga before sailing it into Finnish territorial waters. The vessel is currently being held off the town of Porvoo, 40 kilometers east of Helsinki. Its crew is being detained on suspicion of “aggravated criminal mischief.”
Russian officials have said nothing about the Finnish accusations or impounding of the Eagle S. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Pesokov said Friday, “I can’t say anything for sure. This is a highly specific issue, which is hardly the prerogative of the presidential administration.”
Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Friday it was too early to determine whether the damage was deliberate.
“Four cables have been broken,” Stubb told reporters in Helsinki. “We were able to get the situation under control and locate the ship in question, bring it to Finnish waters and begin a criminal proceeding. There has been substantial damage through the cables.”
Finland suspects the Eagle S is part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of aging vessels used to evade Western sanctions on its oil exports, imposed in the wake of
Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The damage to the Estlink 2 cable is the latest in a series of similar incidents in the Baltic Sea.
In November, a Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, was suspected of severing two fiber-optic data cables in Swedish waters with its anchor. China refused to allow a Swedish prosecutor to board the vessel, which has since departed the Baltic.
Last year, the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland was damaged. Ten months later, China said a Hong Kong-registered vessel had caused the damage in a storm. Finland was skeptical of the admission.
Estonia has called for international maritime laws to be updated to protect infrastructure.
“The situation that is now at the Baltic Sea, where the anchors have been dropping several times in a row — it can’t be by accident,” Estonian Justice Minister Liisa Pakosta told Reuters. “These kinds of situations are not typical, not only for our region, but also for other regions in the world. So, [given] the technological developments that we have, we think that it is a good idea to look over international law to make these investigations more smooth.”
NATO said Friday it would boost its presence in the Baltic Sea. The alliance staged maritime drills in the Baltic earlier last month as a show of force amid escalating tensions with Moscow.
However, formulating a response to unconventional — also known as hybrid — attacks is complex, said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, an analyst with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
“If there begins to be clear attribution by states against other state actors, then just taking it on the chin and being resilient in the long run is going to be probably deeply unsatisfying,” he told VOA. “[But] if you attribute it or you blame someone, will you intensify the circle? And what are you going to do about it? Because you clearly cannot use the same ‘retributionary tools,’ as it were, against Russia and China. At least not yet, I think.”
Estonian authorities said it could take until August to repair the damage to the Estlink 2 cable. The Estonian navy and Swedish coast guards have stepped up surveillance patrols in the area.
