Finland says it has discovered more than two dozen serious defects aboard the Eagle S, a seized ship carrying Russian oil that is accused of deliberately dragging its anchor in the Baltic Sea on Dec. 25, damaging a line underwater electricity and four telecommunications cables. .
On Tuesday, Finnish police said they had recovered an anchor from the seabed, found along the route of the Eagle S. Finnish officials believe the submarine cables, which connect Finland to Estonia and are reinforced with steel and several layers of protective insulation, were torn apart by a strong external force.
The ship is owned by Caravella LLC FZ, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, and eight crew members are currently under investigation.
Suspected of being part of the Russian army “shadow fleet”which Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions on Russian oil, the ship was seized by Finnish authorities as part of a criminal investigation. The country’s public transport agency now says the boat is prohibited to run again until 32 issues are resolved.
“At least it won’t sail for a long time. And that in itself, I think, is a wise decision,” Edward Hunter Christie, a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told CBC News.
The incident involving the Eagle S is the third case of damage to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in just over a month. A maritime risk expert says this sets a dangerous precedent that could have been predicted by a surge in suspicious behavior by Russia-linked vessels in the region.
3 cases of suspected sabotage
Repairing the 170-kilometre Estlink 2 power line is expected to take up to seven months, and electricity prices could rise during the winter in Estonia. The country sent a patrol ship to help protect Estlink1, its other undersea power link to the Gulf of Finland.
Faced with suspected sabotage, NATO has pledged to strengthen its presence in the region and the United Kingdom has activated a new warning system, which uses artificial intelligence to track and warn of potential maritime threats.
Hunter Christie said that when he worked for NATO before 2020, there were discussions about targeting undersea infrastructure, but the discussions were theoretical.
He says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a game-changer.
“I don’t think many serious people would doubt that this was ordered by the Russian state,” Hunter Christie said. “Official statements could be a little more cautious. But I think behind closed doors, no one has any doubt about the nature of this incident.”
Moscow said the seizure of the Eagle S was not Russia’s responsibility. But Alexander Kazakov, a Russian MP, declared on December 27 in state media that “Russia’s goal is to liberate the Baltic Sea.”
Although he did not specifically state that Russia was behind the damage to the cables, he told the program that it was a response to actions taken by Ukraine and its Western allies .
“We are provoking them into an escalation of the situation in the Baltic Sea… so that we have something to answer for.”
Hunter Christie believes that the grounding of the ship by Finland, which was flying the flag under the Cook Islands — sends a strong message to Russia because it means it has one less ship to transport its oil.
“All of a sudden, something that looked like a cheap operation, a relatively inexpensive way to inflict a lot of damage and intimidation on both countries, could become a much more expensive proposition.”
November incidents
Five weeks before the Christmas Day incident, two submarine fiber optic cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea.
A 218 km long internet cable between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland was damaged on November 17. The next day, a 1,200 km cable linking the Finnish capital Helsinki to the German port of Rostock was cut.
At the time, suspicion centered around a Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3which was transporting Russian fertilizers.
After a month-long diplomatic standoff, China allowed investigators from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to board the ship. But Swedish officials later said China had ignored the government’s request that a prosecutor be able to conduct a preliminary investigation on board.
The Yi Peng 3, anchored for weeks in the Kattegat Sea, between Denmark and the west coast of Sweden, left the area and went to Egypt on December 21.
“I think what we’re seeing is the Russians and the Chinese are starting to resort to what I would call gray zone activities,” said Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward, a maritime intelligence. Windward has mapped underwater infrastructure, tracks vessels and uses AI to help analyze vessel behavior and assess risk.
“I think we are entering a whole new world of commercial shipping activities being used repetitively to harm national infrastructure repeatedly around the world.”
Taiwan says it suspects a Chinese crewed vessel damaged an undersea cable last weekend. The director of the Hong Kong-registered company that owned the ship told Reuters there was no evidence of this.
“Cat and mouse game”
Daniel says that before the November incidents, his company had followed a burst of activity in the Baltic Sea by ghost tankers that increasingly turned off their transmitters, obscuring their location and disappearing from radar systems.
According to Windward, during the week of November 7, 116 ships fell into darkness, a 44 percent increase over what would be expected in the region.
Daniel said the public should view what is happening as a game of “cat and mouse,” where there is an incident followed by a response.
The United Kingdom announced on January 6 that it was activating an alert system, called Nordic Warden, as part of the Joint Expeditionary Forcewhich is made up of 10 countries. The system will use AI to track potential threats in 22 areas, including the Baltic Sea, North Sea and English Channel. If there is a potential threat to infrastructure, allies will be alerted.
Helsinki will host a summit of NATO leaders in the Baltic Sea next week, but Daniel says protecting infrastructure is a factor that significantly complicates the situation, as they pass through vast international waters – and that’s not all. makes it clear which agencies are responsible for protecting them.
The Estonian government will apply to the International Maritime Organization in February, urging it to update maritime law, which the country says does not address underwater damage or cover what should happen if a ship deliberately drags its anchor across critical infrastructure.
Estonia says modernizing the law would reduce the risk that these types of cases would have to be brought before international courts.
Daniel believes that European countries were “caught off guard, 100 percent” by the incidents in the Baltic Sea.
“I think Russia and probably China are going after this place, which is probably the hardest place for Western democracies to protect.”
