Ships linked to Russia are accused of vandalism in the Baltic Sea. Some say it may just be the beginning

Finland says it has found more than two dozen serious flaws in the stranded Eagle S, a Russian oil tanker suspected of deliberately dragging its anchor in the Baltic Sea on Dec. 25, damaging an underwater power line and four communication lines. .

On Tuesday, the Finnish police said they found an anchor in the sea, which was found near the route of the Eagle S. Finnish officials believe that the underwater cables, which run between Finland and Estonia and are reinforced with steel and several protective layers of protection, were separated by a strong external force.

The ship is owned by Caravella LLC FZ, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, and eight crew members are now being investigated.

It is suspected that he is part of Russia “shadow ships”used by Moscow to avoid sanctions on Russian oil, the vessel was seized by Finnish authorities as part of a criminal investigation. The country’s public transport agency now says the ship is not allowed from working again until 32 problems have been fixed.

“At least it won’t be for long. And that is, I think, a smart move,” Edward Hunter Christie, a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told CBC News.

The incident involving the S eagle is the third incident of damage to infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in less than a month. One maritime risk expert says it points to a dangerous phenomenon that could have been predicted by a spike in suspicious behavior by Russian-linked ships in the area.

3 cases of alleged vandalism

It is expected to take seven months to repair the 170 km Estlink 2 power line, and electricity prices may increase during the winter in Estonia. The country has sent a patrol vessel to help protect Estlink1, its other underwater power link in the Gulf of Finland.

Amid the suspected sabotage, NATO has vowed to increase its presence in the region, and the UK has activated a new early warning system, which uses artificial intelligence to track and warn about potential maritime threats.

Hunter Christie said that when he worked for NATO before 2020, there was a discussion that underwater infrastructure could be targeted, but the discussions were hypothetical.

He says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed that.

“I don’t think many serious people would doubt that this was ordered by the Russian regime,” Hunter Christie said. “Official announcements may be a little cautious. But I think that outside the doors, no one has doubts about the nature of this incident.”

Moscow has said that the S-Eagle attack is not Russia’s business. But Alexander Kazakov, a member of the Russian Parliament, told state media on December 27 that “Russia’s goal is to liberate the Baltic Sea.”

Although he did not directly say that Russia was responsible for the damage to the cables, he told the program that it was a response to actions taken by Ukraine and its Western allies.

“We are causing them to escalate the situation in the Baltic Sea … so that we have something to respond to.”

Hunter Christie believes the ship was stopped in Finland – which was flagged under the ship Cook Islands – sends a strong message to Russia, because it means it has one small ship to transport its oil.

“All of a sudden, what looked like a cheap stunt, a low-cost way to cause a lot of damage and a lot of intimidation in both countries, could turn out to be a very expensive proposition.”

Events of November

Five weeks before the Christmas Day incident, two undersea fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged.

A 218-km internet cable between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland was damaged on November 17. The next day, a 1,200-km cable connecting the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the German port of Rostock, was cut.

At the time, suspicion centered on a Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, which was carrying Russian fertiliser.

After a month-long standoff, China allowed investigators from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to board the ship. But Swedish officials later said China had not heeded the government’s request that a prosecutor be able to conduct a preliminary investigation into the 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 and headed for Egypt on Dec. 21.

“I think what we’re seeing is the Russians and the Chinese are starting to use what I would call gray-zone operations,” said Ami Daniel, founder and CEO of Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. Windward maps underwater infrastructure, tracks ships and uses AI to help analyze ship behavior and assess risks.

“I think we are entering a new world of commercial activities that are used repeatedly to damage national infrastructure many times around the world.”

Taiwan says it blames a Chinese crew vessel for damaging an underwater cable this past weekend. A director of the Hong Kong-registered company that owns the ship told Reuters there was no evidence of that.

‘A game of cat and mouse’

Daniel says that before the events of November, his company He has been tracking the increase in activity in the Baltic Sea with shadow carriers that have been turning off their transmitters, hiding their location and disappearing from radar systems.

According to Windward, during the week of Nov. 7, 116 ships were blacked out, which is a 44 percent increase over what would be expected locally.

Daniel said that the public must look at what is happening as a game of “cat and mouse”, where there is an incident followed by a response.

The UK announced on Jan. 6 that it activates a warning system, called Nordic Warden, as part of Joint Expeditionary Forcemade up of 10 countries. The system will use AI to track potential threats in 22 areas, including the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel. If there may be a risk to the infrastructure, the partners will be notified.

Helsinki will host NATO’s Baltic Sea leaders’ summit next week, but Daniel says the biggest problem in protecting the infrastructure is that it moves in many foreign waters – and it’s not entirely clear which agencies are responsible for protecting it.

The Estonian government will submit a request to the International Maritime Organization in February urging it to revise its maritime law, which the country says does not deal with underwater damage or cover what should happen if a ship pulls anchor deliberately through critical infrastructure.

Estonia says that modernizing the law will reduce the risk of these types of cases having to go through international courts.

Daniel believes that European countries were “caught off guard, 100 percent” by the events in the Baltic Sea.

“I think Russia and China are after this area, which is probably the most difficult for Western democracies to secure.”