Finland moves tanker suspected of undersea cable damage closer to port
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Finnish police believe the Eagle S may have caused the damage to undersea cables the previous day by dragging its anchor along the seabed.
PHOTO: REUTERS
OSLO - The Finnish authorities said on Dec 28 they are moving an impounded tanker closer to port after boarding the vessel carrying Russian oil earlier this week on suspicion it had damaged an undersea power line and four telecommunications cables.
Baltic Sea nations have been on high alert after a string of outages of power cables, telecoms links and gas pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and Nato said on Dec 27 it would boost its presence in the region.
The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by the authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded on Dec 26 by a Finnish coast guard crew that took command and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official said.
Finnish police believe the Eagle S may have caused the damage to undersea cables the previous day by dragging its anchor along the seabed.
“The police began an operation to transfer the Eagle S tanker from the Gulf of Finland to Svartbeck, an inner anchorage near the port of Kilpilahti,” the Helsinki police department said in a statement on Dec 28.
This would be a better place to carry out investigations, it added.
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 said on Dec 27 Finland’s seizure of the ship was of little concern to it. In the past, Russia has denied involvement in any of the Baltic infrastructure incidents. REUTERS
