Finnish police announced this Wednesday, December 31, that they had seized a ship suspected of having damaged, in the Gulf of Finland, an underwater telecommunications cable linking Helsinki to Tallinn, the Estonian capital.
Police have not released any details about the ship’s origin, but Finnish public broadcaster Yle, citing the specialist site MarineTraffic, said it was the Fitburga 132 meter long cargo ship flying the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, departed from Saint Petersburg, Russia, to Haifa, Israel. The boat is suspected of being “responsible for the damage caused to the cable”, which belongs to the Finnish telecoms group Elisa and is located in the Estonian exclusive economic zone, police said in a statement.
Elisa said in a statement that the damage to the cable had “in no way affected the operation” of its services. The Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea, is bordered by Estonia, Finland and Russia. In recent years, energy and communications infrastructure, including underwater cables and pipelines, have been damaged in the Baltic Sea. Since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many experts and politicians view the alleged cable sabotage as part of Russia’s “hybrid war” against Western countries.
Early Wednesday morning, the telecoms group detected an anomaly on its cable and reported it to the Finnish authorities. A Finnish Coast Guard patrol boat and helicopter located the suspicious vessel in Finland’s exclusive economic zone. His anchor chain was in the water, police said. The coast guard ordered the ship to stop and raise its anchor, then move and anchor in Finnish territorial waters.
“Finland is prepared to meet security challenges”
Finnish police said they were investigating the incident for “aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage and aggravated obstruction of telecommunications.” She specified that she cooperates with several national and international authorities, notably Estonian.
“Finland is prepared to face security challenges of all kinds and we respond accordingly,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a statement published Wednesday on X.
Deputy Prosecutor General Jukka Rappe told Yle that he had ordered a preliminary investigation into the case, which will be conducted by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation. “The cargo ship is suspected of having cut the data cable in circumstances in which it now appears obvious that there is also the possibility of a criminal act,” he estimated, without however excluding the possibility of an accident.
