Finnish authorities are investigating whether a foreign ship played a role in damaging the undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia, which suffered an outage on December 25, Reuters reports.
Mr Arto Pahkin, the head of operations of the Finnish electricity grid, told public broadcaster Yle that “the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out”.
Baltic Sea nations are on alert after a series of disruptions to power cables, telecom lines, and pipelines since 2022. While sabotage is a concern, technical faults or accidents are also possibilities.
“The police, with the Border Guard and other authorities, are examining the incident,” Finnish police stated, adding that the ship involved hasn’t been identified.
This follows ongoing investigations into other incidents. In November, two telecoms cables in the Baltic linking neighbouring Sweden and Denmark were also cut. Suspicion rapidly fell on the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3, which according to ship tracking sites had sailed over the cables around the time they were cut.
There have also been anchor damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline in 2023, and the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosion in the same region, which remains unsolved.
