Finnish authorities seize vessel suspected of damaging Baltic undersea cable

The Commission is monitoring the case, which is suspected as another instance of hybrid warfare

Euractiv

Germany Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Baltic Sea - undersea cable to Hiddensee island [Photo by Jens Köhler/ullstein bild via Getty Images]

Finnish authorities on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of damaging an undersea communications cable between Finland and Estonia, while Swedish authorities discovered two breaks in a different submarine cable connecting to Tallinn.

Since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many experts and politicians have viewed the damages to energy and communications infrastructure in the Baltic Sea as part of Moscow’s “hybrid warfare” against Western countries.

The Commission “is closely monitoring” the Finnish case, the bloc’s Executive vice-president for technological sovereignty and security Henna Virkunen said. “Together with the Member States and NATO, we are prepared to counter hybrid threats,” she added.

The Finnish police did not release details about the origin of the vessel suspected of being responsible for the damage caused to the cable. According to the national public broadcaster Yle, it was a cargo ship flying the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which had departed from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and was bound for Haifa, Israel.

The cable belongs to the Finnish telecommunications group Elisa and is located within Estonia’s exclusive economic zone, the police said in a statement.

On the same day, the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) said that it had discovered two breaks in a fibre cable between Sweden and Estonia.

In December 2024, the Finnish authorities accused the captain and two senior officers of a Cook Islands-registered oil tanker of dragging the anchor on the seabed for around 90 kilometres, damaging five undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland.

Last October, a court in Helsinki dismissed the case.

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