A Russia-linked tanker suspected of cutting Baltic Sea cables has been tugged to port amid reports it was loaded with “spy equipment”.
Finnish authorities boarded the Eagle S tanker at sea after suspecting the vessel of sabotaging undersea power and internet lines on Christmas Day.
The Cook Islands-registered ship was carrying Russian oil when it allegedly slowed down and dragged its anchor along the seabed to damage the Estlink 2 undersea cable, which provides power to Estonia.
A Finnish coastguard crew boarded the Eagle S on Thursday and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official said.
The vessel is said to have been kitted out with special transmitting and receiving devices that monitor all naval activity, according to shipping journal Lloyd’s List citing a source with direct involvement in the ship.
“They were monitoring all Nato naval ships and aircraft,” the source said, adding: “They had all details on them. They were just matching their frequencies.”
Estlink 2 cable’s damage is the latest in a spate of disruptions to power cables and telecom links since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine – Markku Ulander/Reuters
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the vessel was loaded with “huge portable suitcases” and “many laptops” with Turkish and Russian-language keyboards on the ship’s bridge.
Those on board the ship would have been aware of the spying activities but would have been “threatened with their life, so everybody kept quiet”, the source told the journal.
They added that Eagle S had dropped “sensor-type devices” in the English Channel and the recording equipment had been offloaded for analysis upon reaching Russia. The source did not know if the vessel still had the equipment on board when the coastguard boarded.
The Helsinki police department, in a statement on Saturday, said: “The police begin an operation to transfer the Eagle S tanker from the Gulf of Finland to Svartbeck, an inner anchorage near the port of Kilpilahti.
This would be a better place to carry out investigations, it added.
Baltic Sea nations have been on high alert after a spate of disruptions to power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Last month, two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic.
Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, said on Friday that it would increase its presence in the region, while Estonia said it had deployed its navy to guard the Estlink 1 subsea cable, which is still operational.
Finland’s customs service believes the ship is part of a “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers being used to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil.
The Kremlin denied involvement in any of the Baltic infrastructure incidents and said Finland’s seizure of the ship was of little concern.
The damage to Estlink 2 follows the severing of the Arelion data cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania on Nov 17 and the cutting of the C-Lion 1 cable between Helsinki, Finland, and the port of Rostock in Germany.
The Yi Peng 3, a Chinese ship, was suspected of damaging the cables by dragging its anchor.
Source says those on board the Eagle S would have been ‘threatened with their life, so everybody kept quiet’ about the spy equipment – Jussi Nukari/AFP
Germany has described the most recent suspected sabotage as a “wake-up call” that demanded new EU sanctions against Russia’s “shadow fleet”.
“Almost every month, ships are damaging major undersea cables in the Baltic Sea,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement to the Funke media group.
Ms Baerbock added: “Crews are leaving anchors in the water, dragging them for kilometres along the seafloor for no apparent reason, and then losing them when pulling them up.”
Aleksander Stepanov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, responded to the cable cutting by suggesting the Russian navy could escort ships in the Gulf of Finland to avoid such incidents occurring again.
Mr Stepanov told TASS, the Russian state-run media agency: “There is probably only one way out of this: we will start accompanying our friendly and own ships with the fleet. But even that does not guarantee that we will avoid provocations from impudent and frostbitten young naval officers.”
He claimed that Helsinki had received orders from Washington to carry out provocations against the Russian merchant fleet with the aim of expanding Nato control over the sea area.
Jim O’Brien, the US assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, said the US was “deeply concerned” by the damage to the undersea cables, saying “those responsible must be held to account”.
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