Estonia has begun naval patrols to protect a cable supplying electricity from Finland after the suspected sabotage of another one on Christmas Day, the Estonian defence minister, Hanno Pevkur, said.
“We’ve decided to send our navy close to Estlink 1 to defend and secure our energy connection with Finland,” he posted on X.
The Estlink 2 submarine cable was disconnected from the grid on Wednesday, a little more than a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.
Finnish authorities said on Thursday they were investigating an oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port in connection with the suspected “sabotage”.
The Eagle S vessel, which flies under the flag of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, was en route to Port Said in Egypt.
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“The assumption at the moment is that it is a shadow fleet vessel and the cargo was unleaded petrol loaded in a Russian port,” said Sami Rakshit, the director general of Finnish customs.
The shadow fleet refers to ships that transport Russian crude and oil products that are embargoed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Police suspect that the oil tanker’s anchor may have damaged the power cable.
Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, said on Thursday: “The damages to critical underwater infrastructure have become so frequent that it’s hard to believe they are accidents or just bad maritime manoeuvres.”
Dragging an anchor on the seafloor could hardly be considered an accident, Tsahkna added.
