Finland’s brutal response to Russia after their special forces seized Russian shadow fleet tanker that sabotaged undersea power line
Finland has shared a brutal response with Russia after its special forces seized a Russian shadow fleet tanker believed to have carried out a devastating attack on a series of power and internet cables in the Baltic Sea.
The Eagle S’s anchor is suspected of causing damage to the Estlink-2 power cable, which carries electricity from Finland to Estonia across the Baltic Sea, after it sank just after midday on Christmas Day.
In the latest incident to disrupt key infrastructure, Finnish police and border guards boarded the Eagle S just after midnight on Thursday and took over the command bridge, Helsinki police chief Jari Liukku said at a news conference.
The ship was intercepted in Finland’s exclusive economic zone and taken to Finnish territorial waters, police said.
Eagle S flies the Cook Islands flag but was described by Finnish customs officials as a suspected part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of fuel tankers that state-owned companies have used to evade sanctions, Yle Television reported.
Despite the major action against Russia, Ilkka Koskimäki, the director general of the Finnish police, said he would not contact the Kremlin.
When asked if he had contacted the “Russian authorities” following the incident, he simply replied, “No.”
And when asked if he would contact them at all, he simply said, “We won’t.”
Ilkka Koskimäki (pictured), the director general of the Finnish police, said he would not contact the Kremlin in light of the incident
The anchor of the Eagle S probably caused damage to the power cable of the Estlink-2
A Kremlin spokesman said after the outraged comment that it had nothing to add to the issue.
The incident disrupted the electricity connection on Estlink 2 between the EU and NATO states of Finland and Estonia on December 25.
The representative of Finnish transmission system operator Fingrid, Arto Pahkin, said that intentional malicious action has not been ruled out.
‘This is one of the versions we are considering. Because there are two ships in the area where the cables are located.’
Pahkin said: “The possibility of vandalism cannot be ruled out. However, we are currently investigating the situation in its entirety and will inform you of the cause of the outage as soon as we become aware of it.”
It comes as Estonia’s armed forces launched a naval operation to protect the Estlink 1 submarine power cable in the Baltic Sea in response to damage this week to a parallel power line, Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said.
“If there is a threat to the critical undersea infrastructure in our region, there will also be a response,” Tsahkna said on social media X.
Two data cables, one between Finland and Germany, and the other between Lithuania and Sweden, were cut in November.
EstLink 2 power cable
Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures during the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on December 26, 2024
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said officials should assume “sabotage”, without providing evidence or saying who might have been responsible.
The comment came during a speech in which he discussed hybrid warfare threats from Russia – although investigators quickly focused on a Chinese ship that left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on November 15.
A Reuters analysis of MarineTraffic data found that the ship’s coordinates matched the time and place of the breaches.
Previously, the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, constructed to supply natural gas from Russia to Germany, were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022.
There has not yet been a conclusive investigation into who was responsible.
Estlink-2 was back in commercial service at the beginning of September, after being out of service since late January due to a malfunction.
The Estlink-2 incident comes after China said on Monday it had provided information and documents for an open investigation into the cutting of the two submarine cables in the East Sea in November, although China and Sweden disagreed over how transparent Beijing was in the matter had been.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said at a news briefing in Beijing that China had invited Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to participate in and complete the investigation.
She spoke about the incident when asked about a Financial Times report in which Sweden had criticized China for denying full access despite an open investigation and allegedly banning a Swedish prosecutor from boarding the Chinese freighter Yi Peng 3 that was related to the cable break.
Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said China had not responded to the government’s request for the prosecutor to conduct the preliminary investigation on board.
“Our request that Swedish prosecutors, together with the police, among others, be allowed to take certain investigative measures in the context of the preliminary investigation remains on board,” Stenergard told Reuters. “We have been very clear with China about this.”
Stenergard said Sweden hoped to continue dialogue with China with the aim of allowing police and prosecutors to investigate the cable breaks.