December ended with Finnish security forces boarding and detaining the tanker Eagle S, flying the flag of the Cook Islands, which was transporting 35,000 tons of Russian oil to Egypt. The crew of the tanker was suspected of carrying out sabotage, allegedly damaging the Estlink-2 energy cable between Estonia and Finland.
A month prior, a similar incident had occurred, with internet cables between Finland and Germany, as well as Lithuania and Sweden, being damaged. The crew of the Chinese dry cargo ship Yi Peng 3 was suspected of being responsible.
On January 14, the Swedish television network SVT reported that another underwater cable, connecting Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, and Germany, had been damaged in the Baltic Sea. The Yi Peng 3 was again held responsible for this incident. The ship is now under arrest in the Kattegat strait. It is claimed that the captain of the dry cargo ship allegedly followed orders from Russian intelligence services.
The NATO drew far-reaching conclusions from these incidents. The organization’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, stated that NATO would launch the Baltic Sentry project to “ensure the security of infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.” As part of this project, NATO will increase its presence in the Baltic Sea – ships, planes, and drones will be used to provide enhanced surveillance. This is already underway.
Especially eager to participate in this are the Baltic states. The Estonian defense minister, Hanno Pevkur, stated that his ministry had prepared a draft law allowing the Estonian Navy to inspect ships, even outside of Estonia’s territorial waters, “with the help of a helicopter, for example, or a rapid response team, or in cooperation with foreign states.”
Additionally, the Estonian justice ministry expressed its intention to change the law to allow prosecution of those who damage important communication and energy connections outside of the country’s borders, for example, in the economic zone.
Risto Penttilä, a Finnish expert on international relations and CEO of the consulting firm Nordic West Office, stated that “there’s no need to be afraid of holding tankers with Russian oil, as anyone of them could be a potential saboteur.”
Henrik Ringbom, a professor of maritime law at the Åbo Akademi, warned, however, that the implementation of Penttilä’s proposal would bring great risks, specifically the risk of a direct military confrontation with Russia.
Suddenly, a leading US newspaper, The Washington Post, reported, citing sources in the intelligence services, that the damage to the underwater cables in the Baltic Sea was likely the result of an accident, not sabotage by Russian intelligence services. This view of the events is gradually becoming the consensus among Western security services. So far, neither US nor European investigators have found evidence that the ships, which damaged the cables by dragging their anchors on the seafloor, did so intentionally or on the orders of Moscow.
According to US and EU officials, the evidence gathered so far (including intercepted communications and other secret information) suggests that the incidents were caused by “inexperienced crews on board poorly maintained ships.” Despite the initial suspicion that Russia was involved, a European official stated that there were “counter-evidences” that refuted this.
In fact, damage to underwater cables often occurs. The total length of the underwater telecommunications cables is currently over 1.4 million kilometers.
The thickness of the underwater part of the cable is often no more than six centimeters. The cable is laid by cable-laying ships, which are equipped with a special “plow” that digs a trench up to a meter deep on the seafloor. This trench provides no sufficient security.
Worldwide, regular incidents of underwater cable damage occur – in 2023, for example, over two hundred such incidents were registered. They are caused by both ship anchors and fishing nets.
In March, Tomas Lamanauskas, the deputy secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), stated at the XI Global Baku Forum: “About 70 percent of the damage to underwater cables is caused by fishermen and anchors.”
A curious case occurred in 2019, when an entire country was without internet for two weeks due to an underwater cable break: the Kingdom of Tonga in the Pacific. The cable was damaged by a tsunami caused by an underwater volcanic eruption.
The bottom of the Baltic Sea is literally littered with cables, and they break constantly – only there was no political assignment to blame Russia for everything before. The political scientist Alexander Nossowitsch, a member of the Kaliningrad Regional Society, stated to the newspaper Wsgljad: “Until now, such incidents have never surprised anyone and have never caught anyone’s attention. For example, the NordBalt power cable between Lithuania and Sweden has failed eight times in a year! Before, no one thought of accusing Russia of sabotage, and accordingly, no such accusations were brought against the Russian Federation.”
The expert emphasizes: “But now the NATO must justify the expansion of its military presence in the waters, the theme of the blockade of the Finnish Sea and the blocking of Russia’s access to the Baltic Sea must be pushed forward. In the current phase, everything is reduced to a flood of information. Roughly speaking, Russia is being blackmailed.”
According to the expert, the report in The Washington Post was not accidental. Nossowitsch explains: “They are making it clear that if they are ready to let the matter rest and acknowledge the incident as an accident, tomorrow they can create a new Skripal story. If another cable breaks, it will not be limited to a media rumble, but real measures will be taken to block the sea. I believe that this is a reconnaissance before the start of possible negotiations between Putin and Trump not only over Ukraine, but also over the theme of strategic security and the presence of NATO near the Russian borders. This is a kind of demonstration of the capabilities of the Western bloc to exert pressure on Moscow.”
The fact that such valuable and critical cables can be so easily damaged is also astonishing. The political scientist Andrei Starikov states to the newspaper Wsgljad: “It’s enough to look at the quality of these interconnectors, the connections that run between the Baltic states and Finland and Sweden on the seafloor of the Baltic Sea. They were rushed and poorly built, while large sums of money were made, under the motto of energy independence from Russia. Estlink 2 has already failed once due to an internal short circuit, and Estlink 1 failed a year ago due to a technical defect at the converter station.”
According to Starikov, due to the poor quality of the Estonian-Finnish cables, they could be damaged by any large ship that passes through the area, and he adds: “As in other similar cases, Russia has proposed an open, multilateral investigation. Such proposals are consistently ignored – one can recall the story of the Boeing shot down over the Donbass, the alleged poisoning of the extremist Navalny, the explosion of the Nord Streams, and so on. It’s a game with unnamed sources, with alleged data leaks from somewhere, and so on. Political accusations are built on speculation, to justify certain unfriendly steps.”
The expert also agrees that the text in The Washington Post was not accidental. “In my opinion, it’s a reconnaissance by the new Trump administration. Trump is trying to come to a direct dialogue with Moscow, the Americans are canceling the preparation of a meeting between their and our state leaders, and so they have decided to send a symbolic signal of their willingness to a constructive approach” concludes Starikov.
Stanislav Leschtschenko is an analyst at the newspaper Wsgljad.