By Essi Lehto and Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI, Dec 31 (Reuters) – Finnish police on Wednesday seized a ship sailing from Russia on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea telecoms cable running from Helsinki to Estonia across the Gulf of Finland, an area hit by a string of similar incidents in recent years.
The seized cargo vessel “Fitburg” was en route from the Russian port of St Petersburg to Israel at the time of the incident, Finland’s Border Guard authority told a press conference in Helsinki.
“At the moment we suspect aggravated disruption of telecommunications and also aggravated sabotage and attempted aggravated sabotage,” Helsinki Chief of Police Jari Liukku told reporters.
Concern is growing in Europe at what officials see as an increase in hybrid threats from Russia since it launched its war in Ukraine, which Moscow denies.
Earlier this month, NATO’s top military commander said the alliance must be ready to respond to these type of threats to defend its territory.
Hybrid threats refer to both military and non-military tactics designed to undermine an adversary’s security. They can include cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, sabotage of key infrastructure and use of drones or irregular armed groups.
STATES ON HIGH ALERT IN BALTIC SEA SINCE UKRAINE CONFLICT
The Fitburg’s 14 crew members were from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and were all held by Finnish police, investigators said. The ship sailed under the flag of St Vincent and Grenadines.
According to LSEG data, the owner of the vessel is Fitburg Shipping Company Ltd and the manager is Albros Shipping and Trading Ltd. Reuters was not able to reach either of those companies via telephone.
Eight NATO states border the Baltic Sea, which also borders Russia. They have been on high alert after a string of outages of power cables, telecoms links and gas pipelines that run along the relatively shallow seabed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
NATO has boosted its presence in the Baltic with frigates, aircraft and naval drones in recent years.
“We remain in contact with the Finnish authorities, through exchange of information, via the NATO shipping centre located at our Allied Maritime Command in Northwood, UK,” an official at the military alliance said.
The Fitburg was dragging its anchor in the sea, and was directed to Finnish territorial waters, the police and Finland’s Border Guard said. The cable belongs to Finnish telecoms group Elisa.
‘HOPEFULLY NOT DELIBERATE’ SAYS ESTONIAN PRESIDENT
Estonia’s justice ministry said a second telecoms cable connecting the country to Finland had also suffered an outage on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if the cable, belonging to Sweden’s Arelion, was running parallel to Elisa’s.
An Arelion spokesperson confirmed that the company had suffered an outage.
“I’m concerned about the reported damage… Hopefully it was not a deliberate act, but the investigation will clarify,” Estonia’s President Alar Karis said on X.
The European Commission was closely monitoring the incident, EU technology commissioner Henna Virkkunen wrote on X.
Finland in December 2024 boarded the Russian-linked oil tanker Eagle S which investigators said had damaged a power cable and several telecoms links in the Baltic Sea by dragging its anchor.
A Finnish court in October dismissed a criminal case against the Eagle S captain and other crew members, ruling prosecutors failed to prove intent and that any alleged negligence must be pursued by the ship’s flag state or the crew’s home countries.
(Reporting by Essi Lehto and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, Terje Solsvik in Oslo and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, additional reporting by Julia Payne and Louise Rasmussen, Editing by Louise Heavens, Alexandra Hudson)
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