By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) -Crew on board an 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.
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Leaders of the NATO member states around the Baltic Sea are set to meet in Helsinki on Tuesday to discuss the alliance’s response to the threat.
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On Dec. 26, Finnish authorities seized oil tanker Eagle S carrying Russian oil. They said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed for more than 100 km (60 miles).
The head of the investigation, Risto Lohi of the National Bureau of Investigation, told Reuters the vessel was threatening to cut a second power cable, Estlink1, and the BalticConnector gas pipe between Finland and Estonia at the time it was seized.
“There would have been an almost immediate danger that other cables or pipes related to our critical underwater infrastructure could have been damaged,” he said.
Lohi said a ninth crew member from the ship had been added to a list of those being treated as suspects and barred from travelling. Finland announced earlier this month that eight of the 24 crew members were being barred from travel. The captain of the ship is Georgian and the crew are citizens of India and Georgia.
“We have heard and interrogated the crew, and at the moment we have nine crew members as suspects. They are under travel bans related to this to secure the investigation,” Lohi said.
“Naturally, our priority are the individuals whose tasks or responsibilities include the navigation of the ship and the operations related to the anchors.”
In another incident, Finland and other Baltic Sea nations suspect a Chinese bulk carrier, Yi Peng 3, of dragging its anchor to breach two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in November.
Sweden’s Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said on Sunday said that authorities had determined the Chinese ship had also threatened to cut a power cable connecting the Baltic states and the Nordic countries.
“We can today report that it has been determined that there are traces of an anchor, probably from Yi Peng 3, also in connection with NordBalt-cable, that is, the connection between Sweden and Lithuania. This obviously illustrates the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in,” he told reporters.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen and Essi Lehto in HelsinkiAdditional reporting by Johan Ahlander in StockholmEditing by Peter Graff)
