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Finland suspects an oil tanker that is part of Russia’s shadow fleet of damaging an underwater electricity cable and three communication cables, opening an investigation into the vessel for aggravated sabotage.
The Eagle S was stopped by Finnish authorities after the Estlink 2 subsea electricity cable in the Gulf of Finland was disconnected on Wednesday. The tanker, which is registered in the Cook Islands and is carrying oil from Russia to Egypt according to ship tracking data, was seen passing over the cable at the time of the incident.
Finnish police said on Thursday that they believe the vessel’s anchor, which they did not find on the ship, cut the cables.
“We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet,” said Finland’s President Alexander Stubb in a post on X after a meeting with security chiefs on Thursday.
The aged Eagle S tanker is part of Russia’s shadow fleet, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The shadow fleet is a group of old and often poorly maintained ships used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions on its oil exports.
The Christmas Day incident appears to be the latest in a series of pipelines and cables being targeted in the Baltic Sea by foreign vessels, sparking fears of deliberate attacks on critical infrastructure between Nato countries.
Last year a Chinese container ship, the Newnew Polar Bear, cut a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia but was not stopped by authorities as it was in international waters.
A Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, last month passed over two data cables between Finland and Germany and Sweden and Lithuania about the times they were severed. It stopped for a month in international waters between Denmark and Sweden.
Chinese investigators finally boarded the ship last week, with Swedish, Danish, German and Finnish representatives present as observers. But Sweden’s foreign minister criticised Beijing for not allowing the lead Swedish investigator to board or to inspect the vessel, which has now left the region.
The Eagle S case is different as the ship voluntarily stopped inside Finnish waters, according to people familiar with the investigation, leaving no question as to jurisdiction. Ownership of the Eagle S is murky but it appears to be the only vessel owned by a Dubai company. Attempts to reach the owner on Thursday were unsuccessful.
Both Finland and Estonia have said the damage to Estlink 2 will not affect their electricity supplies. But it raises more pressure on Estonia as the cable was mostly used for exporting power to the Baltic country from Finland. Power data showed that Estonia had to import electricity from Russia to cover the shortfall.
Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, said he could not “rule out deliberate damage to the cable. There have been too many incidents [in the] Baltic Sea that coincidences are becoming unlikely.”
Finnish authorities are keeping an open mind on the motivation for the latest incident, not least due to the poorly maintained state of much of the shadow fleet. But a number of governments in the region suspect Russia of paying crews to cause damage.
Environmental campaigners have issued repeated warnings about the dangers in the region and elsewhere of the dilapidated vessels.
In the Mediterranean, a Russian cargo ship under US sanctions for working with the Russian military sank between Spain and Algeria on Tuesday.
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