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On Boxing Day, Finnish investigators enter an oil tanker in the Baltic Sea. The Cook Islands-flagged Eagle S was suspiciously close to the Estlink 2 power line between Estonia and Finland, which suddenly stopped working on Christmas Day. "We sent a patrol boat to the tanker and found that the anchors were not in place. Therefore we had reason to believe that something strange was happening," said the deputy head of the border guard Markku Hassinen at a press conference.
Hybrid attacks in the Baltic Sea region have increased
Is it a power line accident? The Finnish authorities do not believe this. They are investigating the case as serious sabotage. Since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, hybrid attacks have increased in the Baltic Sea region. Finland is often the target of such attacks. And it is not unusual for Russia to play a role in this, says Hiski Haukkala, head of the Finnish Foreign Policy Institute in Helsinki.
Russia is testing its limits and conducting increasingly aggressive such hybrid attacks. This covers the whole spectrum of activities, Haukkala points out, "ranging from disinformation campaigns to more aggressive forms of cyber-attacks and perhaps even physical acts of sabotage as we have seen here in Europe".
Not far away, in November there was damage to data cables between Finland and Germany, as well as Sweden and Lithuania. There, too, the investigators targeted a foreign ship. But unlike the case in November, Finnish authorities can examine the ship this time. Because the Eagle S is in Finnish territorial waters, investigators can go on board, talk to the crew and collect evidence. "We assume that the ship is part of the shadow fleet. According to our information, it was carrying unleaded gasoline that was filled in a Russian port," says Sami Rakshit, head of Finnish customs./ DW
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