Finnish authorities boarded the Eagle S tanker at sea after suspecting the vessel of sabotaging undersea power and internet lines on Christmas Day. The Cook Islands-registered ship was carrying Russian oil when it allegedly slowed down and dragged its anchor along the seabed to damage the Estlink 2 undersea cable , which provides power to Estonia.
A Finnish coastguard crew boarded the Eagle S on Thursday and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official said. They were just matching their frequencies.
The source did not know if the vessel still had the equipment on board when the coastguard boarded. This would be a better place to carry out investigations, it added. Last month, two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic. Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, said on Friday that it would increase its presence in the region, while Estonia said it had deployed its navy to guard the Estlink 1 subsea cable, which is still operational.
The damage to Estlink 2 follows the severing of the Arelion data cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania on Nov 17 and the cutting of the C-Lion 1 cable between Helsinki, Finland, and the port of Rostock in Germany. The Yi Peng 3, a Chinese ship, was suspected of damaging the cables by dragging its anchor.
Aleksander Stepanov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, responded to the cable cutting by suggesting the Russian navy could escort ships in the Gulf of Finland to avoid such incidents occurring again. But even that does not guarantee that we will avoid provocations from impudent and frostbitten young naval officers. He claimed that Helsinki had received orders from Washington to carry out provocations against the Russian merchant fleet with the aim of expanding Nato control over the sea area.
