Finland police investigate role of foreign ship after power cable outage
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The Swedish police are meanwhile leading an investigation into the breach in November of two Baltic Sea telecom cables.
PHOTO: AFP
OSLO – The Finnish police on Dec 26 said they are investigating whether a foreign ship was involved in the damage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia, following a sudden outage on Dec 25.
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for potential acts of sabotage following a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since 2022, although subsea equipment is also subject to technical malfunction and accidents.
The 658MW Estlink 2 power interconnector remains offline following the outage that began at midday local time on Dec 25, leaving only the 358MW Estlink 1 in operation between the two countries, operator Fingrid said.
“The police, in cooperation with the Border Guard and other authorities, are investigating the chain of events of the incident,” the Finnish police said in a statement.
Investigators were probing the potential role of a foreign ship, the police said, without naming the vessel.
The police in Sweden are meanwhile leading an investigation into the breach in November of two Baltic Sea telecom cables, in an incident German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said he assumed was caused by sabotage.
Separately, the Finnish police continue to investigate damage caused in 2023 to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia, as well as several telecoms cables, and have said this was likely caused by a ship dragging its anchor.
In 2022, the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream gas pipelines running along the seabed in the same waters were blown up, in a case still under investigation by Germany. REUTERS
