Finnish police have seized a cargo vessel suspected of damaging an undersea cable.
The Fitburg had departed from Russia and was en path to Israel when Finnish authorities detained the ship.
It’s suspected of inflicting injury to a telecoms cable operating from Helsinki to Estonia’s capital Tallinn.
“Finnish authorities have taken management of the vessel as a part of a joint operation,” police mentioned.
Fourteen crew members are being held by authorities.
Eight NATO states border the Baltic Sea, which additionally borders Russia.
They’ve been on excessive alert after a spate of outages of energy cables, telecoms hyperlinks and fuel pipelines that run alongside the comparatively shallow seabed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
NATO has boosted its presence within the Baltic with frigates, plane and naval drones lately.
A spokesperson for the navy alliance declined to touch upon Wednesday’s incident.
The Fitburg sailed beneath the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines, a police spokesperson mentioned.
It had departed from St Petersburg in Russia and was headed to Haifa in Israel, in line with MarineTraffic information.
The vessel was dragging its anchor within the sea, and was directed to Finnish territorial waters, the police and Finland’s Border Guard acknowledged.
The cable belongs to Finnish telecoms group Elisa.
“At this stage, the police are investigating the incident as aggravated felony injury, tried aggravated felony injury, and aggravated interference with telecommunications,” the police mentioned.
Estonia’s justice ministry mentioned a second telecoms cable connecting the nation to Finland had additionally suffered an outage on Wednesday.
It was not instantly clear if the cable, belonging to Sweden’s Arelion, was operating parallel to Elisa’s.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb mentioned the scenario was being monitored.
Posting on X, he added: “Finland is ready for numerous safety challenges and responds to them within the method the scenario requires.”
In December final yr, Finland boarded the Russian-linked oil tanker Eagle S which investigators mentioned had broken an influence cable and a number of other telecoms hyperlinks within the Baltic Sea by dragging its anchor.
A Finnish courtroom in October dismissed a felony case in opposition to the Eagle S captain and different crew members, ruling prosecutors did not show intent and that any alleged negligence should be pursued by the ship’s flag state or the crew’s house nations.
