Finnish authorities said Thursday they were investigating an oil tanker that departed Russia in connection with damage to the Estlink 2 power transmission cable.
A power line running from Finland to Estonia under the Baltic Sea was broken on Christmas Day. This comes just a month after a telecommunications cable broke in Swedish territorial waters.
What is known about the ship?
According to reports, the ship, Eagle S, is a tanker registered in the Cook Islands and had departed from a Russian port. Finnish authorities had stopped it on Thursday as part of a rehearsal.
Finnish broadcasting corporation YLE, citing global ship tracking service MarineTraffic, reported that the ship appeared to have slowed down while passing through an area where the cable was offline.
The Reuters news agency, citing MarineTraffic data, also suggested that the power outage occurred at the same time as the Eagle S panamax oil tanker crossed the Estlink 2 power cable.
According to Marinetraffic, YLE reported that the oil tanker was headed from St. Petersburg to Egypt.
Citing the British publication Lloyd’s List, it was informed that Eagle S was part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet.
“The assumption at the moment is that this is a shadow fleet ship and the cargo was loaded with unleaded petrol in a Russian port,” said Finnish customs chief Sami Rakshit.
Meanwhile, Finnish police believe the damage to the cables was caused by the ship’s anchor, according to YLE, citing preliminary police reports.
What is Russia’s so-called shadow fleet?
Russia is circumventing Western sanctions on its oil industry with a so-called shadow fleet of unregistered oil tankers.
“We followed the situation closely with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo yesterday,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on X.
“The risks posed by the Russian shadow fleet must be rejected,” he said.
Authorities in the region are on high alert for possible acts of sabotage after power cables, gas pipelines and telecommunications contacts in the Baltic Sea are continuously disrupted, although undersea cables are also being disrupted by technical failures and accidents.
kb/rmt (AFP, Reuters, AP)
