Oil tanker sabotage crew had been poised to chop extra cables when caught, Finland says

By Anne Kauranen

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Crew on board an oil tanker accused of sabotaging undersea energy and communications cables within the Baltic Sea had been poised to chop different cables and pipelines when Finnish authorities boarded the vessel final month, the top of the Finnish investigation stated.

Baltic Sea nations are on excessive alert after a string of energy cable, telecom hyperlink and gasoline pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Leaders of the NATO member states across the Baltic Sea are set to fulfill in Helsinki on Tuesday to debate the alliance’s response to the menace.

On Dec. 26, Finnish authorities seized oil tanker Eagle S carrying Russian oil. They stated they suspected the vessel had broken the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 energy line and 4 telecoms cables by dragging its anchor throughout the seabed for greater than 100 km (60 miles).

The top of the investigation, Risto Lohi of the Nationwide Bureau of Investigation, advised Reuters the vessel was threatening to chop a second energy cable, Estlink1, and the BalticConnector gasoline pipe between Finland and Estonia on the time it was seized.

“There would have been an virtually fast hazard that different cables or pipes associated to our vital underwater infrastructure might have been broken,” he stated.

Lohi stated a ninth crew member from the ship had been added to an inventory of these being handled as suspects and barred from travelling. Finland introduced earlier this month that eight of the 24 crew members had been being barred from journey. The captain of the ship is Georgian and the crew are residents of India and Georgia.

“We’ve got heard and interrogated the crew, and in the meanwhile we’ve got 9 crew members as suspects. They’re below journey bans associated to this to safe the investigation,” Lohi stated.

“Naturally, our precedence are the people whose duties or tasks embody the navigation of the ship and the operations associated to the anchors.”

In one other incident, Finland and different Baltic Sea nations suspect a Chinese language bulk provider, 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 stated on Sunday stated that authorities had decided the Chinese language ship had additionally threatened to chop an influence cable connecting the Baltic states and the Nordic international locations.

“We will right this moment report that it has been decided that there are traces of an anchor, most likely from Yi Peng 3, additionally in reference to NordBalt-cable, that’s, the connection between Sweden and Lithuania. This clearly illustrates the seriousness of the scenario we discover ourselves in,” he advised reporters.