Finnish authorities suspect that a cable break in the Gulf of Finland may have been caused by a ship. This was reported by the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, on Wednesday afternoon on the media outlet X.
It concerns a data communication cable between Helsinki in Finland and Tallinn in Estonia. The ship was located within Estonia's economic zone and, according to Finnish police, had dropped anchor.
Finnish authorities have taken the suspected ship into their custody, the Finnish Border Guard writes on X.
- We are monitoring the situation in close cooperation with the government, Stubb writes in his post on X.
He adds that "Finland is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as needed". It is not clear from the president's post whether the cable break is suspected to have been intentional or accidental.
This is not the first time that damaged cables between Finland and Estonia have been reported. On December 25 last year, the Estlink 2 submarine cable was severed.
Finnish authorities subsequently raised suspicions about the tanker "Eagle S", which is believed to be linked to Russia's so-called shadow fleet. These are ships that Russia allegedly uses to circumvent international sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Later, a captain and a first and second officer on the tanker were charged with "gross vandalism and gross disruption of communication lines". The defendants pleaded not guilty.
In October, a district court in Helsinki ruled that Finland did not have jurisdiction to prosecute the defendants. It was subsequently unclear whether this was because "Eagle S" was not in Finnish waters when the cable break occurred.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been increasing attention to submarine cables in general after several incidents with damaged cables.
/ritzau/
Text, graphics, images, sound, and other content on this website are protected under copyright law. DK Medier reserves all rights to the content, including the right to exploit the content for the purpose of text and data mining, cf. Section 11b of the Copyright Act and Article 4 of the DSM Directive.
Customers with IP agreements/major customer agreements may only share Danish Offshore Industry articles internally for the purpose of handling specific cases. Sharing in connection with specific cases refers to journaling, archiving, or similar uses.
Customers with a personal subscription/login may not share Danish Offshore Industry articles with individuals who do not themselves have a personal subscription to Danish Offshore Industry.
Any deviation from the above requires written consent from DK Medier.
