Crew on board the Eagle S oil tanker accused of sabotaging undersea power and communications cables in the Baltic Sea were poised to cut other cables and pipelines when Finnish authorities boarded the vessel last month, the head of the Finnish investigation said.
A Finnish telecoms firm says it's repaired two cables under the Baltic Sea that were severed last month. The company's security chief says they appear to have been cut by an anchor. Other cables that were damaged in the same area, including a major power link #Estlink2 , have not yet been fixed.
Finland's coast guard has seized a vessel suspected of deliberately cutting the cables. The EU has linked the ship, the Eagle S, to Russia, accusing it of carrying embargoed Russian oil.
undersea power cable estlink 2 outage: Another Baltic Sea incident; undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia breaks down, sabotage expected https://www.byteseu.com/599316/ #BalticSea #Estlink2 #Estonia #Finland #FinlandElectricitySupply #FinnishPrimeMinisterPetteriOrpo #RecentInfrastructureIncidents #UnderseaPowerCable #UnderseaPowerCableEstlink2Outage #UnderseaPowerCableSabotage
Finland is flying investigators to the Eagle S, and is interrogating the crew. The officials have confiscated the communications devices and storage media (cellphones, tablets, laptops, external storage devices I presume) and will perform #forensics on them. Several crew members are suspected of aggravated criminal mischief. If convicted the penalty ranges from 2 to 10 years imprisonment.
Image released by the Finnish Police about the Eagle S boarding. Two helicopters were used, one Finnish Defence Forces and another Border Patrol (AS332-H215 Super Puma in the image). The helicopters were crewed by Police and Border Guard Special Intervention Units. The units were armed in case of resistance, but none was met.
Okay. One motive for Russia to cut feed cables from Finland to Estonia seems pretty much apparent: Earlier this year the Baltics announced their intent to cut their electricity grid’s connections from Russian electric infrastructure, ending their dependence on russian electricity. 
#estlink2 #eagle_s #sabotage #finland #estonia
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/baltic-countries-leave-joint-power-grid-with-russia-belarus-2024-07-16/
This time we didn’t stand by and let them escape.
After the sabotage of power lines between Estonia & Finland was detected, in a few hours the Russian ’shadow fleet’ tanker was boarded by authorities and ordered to lift it’s anchors: Only the chains remained. The vessel was then seized and escorted to a naval base for inspection.
5 out of attempted 10 cables were severed. Electricity prices in Estonia affected.
#russia #sabotage #estlink2 #eagle_s #nafo
https://yle.fi/a/74-20133526/64-3-253939
It appears that Russia has figured out a secondary function for their grey fleet: Hybrid warfare.
They create a "shipping company" to some country outside of the sanctions. The company likely has only a single asset: the vessel itself. The vessels are very old and in poor condition and have no insurance. A crew is hired to operate the vessel.
Normally these vessel are used to circumvent the sanctions in place, for example to sell Russian oil.
As a recent new development it appears that these vessels are also used to perform hybrid operations that target undersea cables. Prime example is the Baltic sea that is relatively shallow, and the cable locations are well documented. There has been multiple recent incidents involving ships that "accidentally" drag their anchors and cause damage.
The operation likely also involves finding crew members willing to take a compensation for performing the malicious task of dragging the anchor on the seabed. This is made easier by the fact that the crew can claim ignorance or bad seamanship. The threat to these persons is very limited, as the Nordic countries have very lenient legal systems. It is unlikely that they would be incarcerated for a significant amount of time, even if found guilty of sabotage.
The payout vs the investment is significant. The damage caused by the disruption of the undersea #telecommunications and electricity cables likely far exceeds the value of the ship or the cargo combined. The involved ship can just ignore any requests to stop or allow for inspections, as long as they are in international waters.
Considering there is a really high barrier in disrupting international shipping, anyone willing to abuse the system can continue to do so until significant changes will be made.
It appears that the cable has been cut deliberately. Finnish Border Guard ship Turva has stopped the tanker Eagle S suspected to be involved in the incident. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:712379/mmsi:518998865/imo:9329760/vessel:EAGLE_S
YLE news: https://yle.fi/a/74-20133516 (in english)
Estlink 2 undersea #electricity cable between Finland and Estonia is down. https://yle.fi/a/74-20133467 (in english)
2/ The failure point of the #EstLink2 interconnection still hasn't been found.
#Finland's transmission system operator #Fingrid estimates that the interconnection will be unavailable until February 4th.
The failure won't affect Finland's energy market, but has resulted in higher than normal energy prices in #Estonia due to 650MW being unavailable. Today's avg prices in Finland are 17.80€/MWh compared to #Estonia's 110.19€/MWh
1/ The interconnection #EstLink2 used for power transfer between #Finland and #Estonia was disconnected suddenly on January 26th just after midnight local time.
An investigation regarding the disconnect has been launched. It's currently unknown why the disconnect happened and if there was an outside factor regarding it similar to the #Balticconnector last year.
This was reported by #Fingrid, Finland's transmission system operator.
https://www.fingrid.fi/en/news/news/2024/failure-on-estlink-2-interconnection-26.1.2024/
