Finnish investigators say they have found a seabed trail stretching almost 100km (about 60 miles) around the site of an underwater electricity cable that was damaged on Christmas Day in a suspected act of Russian sabotage.
The ship under suspicion of causing the damage, a vessel called the Eagle S flying the flag of the Cook Islands, is believed to be part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, used for transporting Russian oil products subject to embargos after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“Our current understanding is that the drag mark in question is that of the anchor of the Eagle S,” the police chief investigator, Sami Paila, said on Sunday. “We have been able to clarify this matter through underwater research,” he told the Finnish national broadcaster Yle.
The apparent act of sabotage damaged the Estlink 2 electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia. The cable will take months to repair, which could lead to increased electricity prices in Estonia over the winter. It is the latest in a series of suspicious incidents involving damage to underwater power and communications cables.
Paila said the “question of intent is a completely essential issue” and would be clarified during the investigation. However, a senior Estonian official said there was little doubt that the two countries were dealing with a deliberate attack.
“If you’re dragging an anchor, it can’t be that you don’t notice it, because the ship would go off course. It’s clearly not possible,” the official told the Guardian.
The Estonian official admitted it was “not easy to prove” who was behind the attack, though suspicion naturally falls on Russia, which has been conducting a campaign of sabotage against Nato countries over the past two years.
The crew of the Eagle S was made up of Georgian and Indian nationals, Finnish media reported, but the ship had recently docked in Russia and was believed to be carrying Russian oil products.
The Estonian official said that when the alarm came on Christmas Day, Finland and Estonia sent ships to the area but the Estonian vessel could not cope with the stormy seas, so the Finns took the lead. “It took a couple of hours to clarify exactly which ship was to blame, and during that time [the Eagle S] cut two communication lines as well,” said the official.
However, the ship was stopped before there was any damage to Estlink 1, a second electricity cable linking Finland and Estonia. Tallinn has launched a naval and special forces operation to protect the remaining pipeline.
The apparent sabotage comes as Estonia plans to decouple its power grid from the old Soviet network this coming spring and unite with a central European network instead. The official said these plans would go ahead but the damage to the cable would probably prove costly, citing incurred losses when the same cable was put out of action a year ago in an act not linked to sabotage.
“It was a 10% increase in cost during the months it took to repair. Altogether, Estonians paid €90m more due to that. So it’s not peanuts,” the official said.
Last month two fibre-optic cables were damaged in waters between Sweden and Denmark in an apparent act of sabotage by a Chinese ship. Repeated incidents in the Baltic Sea led the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, to announce on Friday that the alliance would increase its military presence in the sea.
The Estonian official said Tallinn’s own military operation would focus on monitoring the heavy traffic in the Baltic and providing a speedy response to threats. “We try to identify suspicious ships, or if we see that the anchor is in the water we will do everything to stop this ship before it reaches the cable,” the official said.
