Finland says it has detected more than two dozen serious defects aboard the confiscated Eagle S ship carrying Russian crude oil and accused of deliberately anchoring in the Baltic Sea on December 25, damaging an underwater power line and four telecommunications cables.
On Tuesday, Finnish police said they had recovered an anchor from the seabed that was found along the route of the Eagle S cruise. Finnish officials believe the underwater cables, which run between Finland and Estonia and are reinforced with steel and several layers of protective insulation, were torn by strong external force.
The vessel is owned by Caravella LLC FZ, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, and eight crew members are currently under investigation.
Suspected of belonging to Russia “shadow fleet”which Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions on Russian oil, the ship was seized by Finnish authorities as part of a criminal investigation. the national public transport agency now claims ship is prohibited from working again until 32 issues are fixed.
“At least he won't be swimming for a long time. And that in itself is, I think, a smart move,” Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told CBC News.
The incident involving the Eagle S is the third time critical infrastructure has been damaged in the Baltic Sea in just over a month. One maritime risk expert says this sets a dangerous precedent that could have been predicted by an increase in suspicious behavior by Russia-linked vessels in the area.
3 cases of suspected sabotage
Repairs to the 170-kilometer Estlink 2 power line are expected to take up to seven months, and electricity prices in Estonia may rise in winter. The country sent a patrol vessel to help protect Estlink1, the second underwater energy link to the Gulf of Finland.
In the face of suspected sabotage, NATO has pledged to increase its presence in the region, and the UK has launched a new warning system that uses artificial intelligence to track and warn about potential maritime threats.
Hunter Christie said that when he worked for NATO before 2020, there was discussion that underwater infrastructure could be a target, but the talks were theoretical.
He says Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed that.
“I don't think there are many serious people in any doubt that this was ordered by the Russian state,” Hunter Christie said. “Official declarations may be a bit more cautious. “But I think behind closed doors no one has any doubts about the nature of this incident.”
Moscow stated that it was not Russia's responsibility to seize the Eagle S. However, on December 27, Russian member of parliament Alexander Kazakov said in a state media program that “Russia's goal is to liberate the Baltic Sea.”
While he did not specifically say Russia was behind the cable damage, he told the program it was in response to actions taken by Ukraine and its Western allies.
“We are provoking them to escalate the situation in the Baltic Sea… so that we have something to react to.”
Hunter Christie believes that the Finnish grounding of the ship – flagged under Cook Islands — sends a strong signal to Russia because it means it has one less ship to transport oil.
“Suddenly, what looked like a cheap stunt, a relatively cheap way to do a lot of damage and intimidate both countries, could become a much more expensive proposition.”
November incidents
Five weeks before the Christmas Day incident, two undersea fiber optic cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea.
On November 17, the 218 km long Internet cable connecting Lithuania with the Swedish island of Gotland was damaged. The next day, a 1,200 km long internet cable connecting the capital of Finland, Helsinki, with the German port of Rostock was interrupted.
At that time, suspicions centered around the so-called Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3which was transporting Russian fertilizer.
After a month of diplomatic wrangling, China brought on board investigators from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. However, Swedish officials later said China had not heeded the government's request that a prosecutor be allowed to conduct a preliminary investigation on board.
The Yi Peng 3, which had been anchored for weeks in the Kattegat Sea between Denmark and the west coast of Sweden, left the area on December 21 for Egypt.
“I think we're seeing the Russians and the Chinese starting to take advantage of what I would call gray zone operations,” said Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. Windward maps underwater infrastructure, tracks ships and uses artificial intelligence to analyze ship behavior and assess risk.
“I think we are entering a whole new world of commercial shipping activities that are being repeatedly exploited to harm national infrastructure on a large scale around the world.”
Taiwan says it suspects a ship with a Chinese crew damaged an underwater cable last weekend. A director of the Hong Kong-registered company that owns the ship told Reuters there was no evidence of this.
“Cat and Mouse Game”
Daniel claims that his company was operating before the November events observed an increase in activity in the Baltic Sea by shadow tankers that increasingly turned off their transmitters, obscuring their location and disappearing from radar systems.
According to Windward, 116 vessels went dark during the week of November 7, a 44% increase over what would be expected in the area.
Daniel said society should see what is happening as a cat-and-mouse game in which there is an incident followed by a response.
On January 6, the UK announced it was activating a warning system dubbed Nordic Warden as part of the program Joint Expeditionary Forcewhich consists of 10 countries. The system will use artificial intelligence to track potential threats in 22 areas, including the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel. If there is a potential threat to infrastructure, allies will be alerted.
A NATO leaders' summit on the Baltic Sea will be held in Helsinki next week, but Daniel says the main complicating factor in protecting the infrastructure is that it runs through vast international waters – and it's not entirely clear which agencies are responsible for protecting it.
Estonian government will apply to the International Maritime Organization by February, calling on it to update maritime law, which the country says does not regulate underwater damage or cover what should happen if a ship intentionally drags its anchor through critical infrastructure.
Estonia argues that modernizing the law would minimize the risk of having to resolve such cases in international courts.
Daniel believes that European countries were “100 percent caught by surprise” by the incidents in the Baltic Sea.
“I think Russia and probably China are attacking the place that is probably the hardest for Western democracies to protect.”