Finland has said it cannot exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind damage to a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, amid what its national security intelligence service called “significantly deteriorated” relations with Russia.
Nato defence ministers were due to be briefed at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday on the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia as well as the parallel Estlink telecommunications cable, officials said.
Helsinki confirmed the damage, without specifying any details, on Tuesday after one of the pipeline’s two operators, Finland’s Gasgrid, said it had shut it down after registering a sudden drop in pressure shortly before 2am on Sunday.
“Involvement of a state actor in this job cannot be ruled out,” the director of the security intelligence service (Supo), Antti Pelttari, said on Thursday. “Who is behind this is a matter for the preliminary investigation. We do not comment in more detail.”
The incident, which came almost exactly a year after a series of explosions burst three of the four Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to western Europe, has sparked renewed concern over regional energy security and pushed gas prices higher.
Finnish investigators said on Wednesday that they had found marks on the seabed at the scene of the damage, which they had reason to suspect was caused by “an external force” that “appears to have been mechanical, not an explosion”.
They said the investigation was in its “very early technical stages” and would take several days to complete. Maritime traffic in the busy Gulf of Finland in the hours before the incident was being carefully reviewed, they said.
Balticconnector’s operators have said it will take at least five months to repair the pipeline and it is unlikely to come on stream again until April 2024 at the earliest. Finland relies on gas for about 5% of its energy supplies.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Wednesday that if the damage to the Balticconnector was “proven to be an attack on Nato critical infrastructure … it will be met by a united and determined response from Nato”.
Speaking at Nato headquarters on Thursday, Estonia’s defence minister, Hanno Pevkur, said the security of undersea infrastructure was “one of the most acute topics at the moment for Estonia and Finland”.
He said two investigations were under way. “We are not speculating at the moment about any cause,” he said, but the governments would get information out as soon as possible. An overview was due to be shared with Nato allies later on Thursday.
In a national security overview published on Thursday, Supo said relations between Finland and Russia had “significantly deteriorated, with Russia prepared to take measures against Finland if it deems this necessary”.
In the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, international sanctions and Finland’s Nato membership, Russia was “currently treating Finland as a hostile country”, the agency said, and would consequently “determine its own measures”.
Supo said the threat to Finland’s critical infrastructure had increased, but a “crippling effect” remained unlikely. However, “marine infrastructure remains more vulnerable than land-based installations”, it said.
Finnish media have said at least one Russian-flagged vessel was near the the 48-mile (77km) pipeline at about the time of the rupture and a Russian hydrographic survey vessel had visited the site three times during the summer.
