Russian-linked ships are suspected of sabotage in the Baltic Sea. Some say it may be just the beginning

Finland says it has found more than two dozen serious deficiencies aboard the impounded Eagle S, a ship that was carrying Russian oil and is accused of deliberately dragging its anchor in the Baltic Sea on Dec. 25, damaging an underwater power line and four telecommunication cables. 

On Tuesday, Finnish police said they recovered an anchor from the seabed, which was found along the route of the Eagle S. Finnish officials believe the underwater cables, which run between Finland and Estonia and are reinforced with steel and several layers of protective insulation, were torn apart by a strong external force.

The ship is owned by Caravella LLC FZ, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, and eight crew members are now under investigation. 

Suspected of being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet”, which Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions on Russian oil, the ship was seized by Finnish authorities as part of a criminal investigation. The country’s public transport agency now says the vessel is forbidden from operating again until 32 issues are fixed.

“At least it won’t sail for a long time. And that in itself is, I think, a smart move,” Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told CBC News.

The incident involving the Eagle S is the third case of damage to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in just over a month. One maritime risk expert says it points to a dangerous precedent that could have been predicted by a spike in suspicious behaviour by Russian-linked vessels in the area.

3 cases of suspected sabotage 

It is expected to take up to seven months to repair the 170-kilometre Estlink 2 power line, and electricity prices could rise over the winter in Estonia. The country has sent a patrol ship to help protect Estlink1, its other underwater power link to the Gulf of Finland.

Amid suspicious sabotage, NATO has vowed to step up its presence in the region, and the U.K. has activated a new alert system, which uses artificial intelligence to track and warn about potential maritime threats.

Hunter Christie said that when he worked for NATO prior to 2020, there was discussion that underwater infrastructure could be targeted, but the talks were theoretical. 

He says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed that.

“I don’t think many serious people would doubt that this was ordered by the Russian state,” said Hunter Christie. “The official declarations might be slightly more cautious. But I think behind closed doors, nobody has any doubts as to the nature of this incident.”

Moscow has said the seizure of the Eagle S is not a matter for Russia. But Alexander Kazakov, a Russian MP, told a state media program on Dec. 27 that “Russia’s goal is to liberate the Baltic Sea.”

While he didn’t specifically say Russia was behind the damage to the cables, he told the program it was a response to actions taken by Ukraine and its Western allies. 

“We are provoking them into an escalation of a situation in the Baltic Sea … so that we have something to respond to.”

Hunter Christie believes Finland’s grounding of the ship — which was flagged under the Cook Islands — sends a strong message to Russia, because it means it has one less vessel to transport its oil.

“All of a sudden, something that looked like a cheap stunt, a relatively low-cost way of inflicting a lot of damage and a lot of intimidation on the two countries, could become a much more expensive proposition.”

November incidents

Five weeks before the Christmas Day incident, two undersea fibre optic cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged.

A 218-km-long internet cable between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland island was damaged on Nov. 17. The following day, a 1,200-km cable connecting the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the German port of Rostock, was severed.

At the time, suspicion centred around a Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, which was carrying Russian fertilizer. 

After a month-long diplomatic standoff, China allowed investigators from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to board the ship. But Swedish officials later said China didn’t heed the government’s request for a prosecutor to be able to conduct a preliminary investigation on board. 

The Yi Peng 3, which had been anchored for weeks in the Kattegat Sea between Denmark and the west coast of Sweden, left the area and travelled to Egypt on Dec. 21. 

“I think what we’re seeing is the Russians and the Chinese are starting to use what I would call grey-zone activities,” said Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. Windward has mapped underwater infrastructure, tracks ships and uses AI to help analyze vessel behaviour and assess risk. 

“I think we’re stepping into a whole new world of commercial shipping activity being used repetitively to hurt national infrastructure at scale multiple times around the world.”

Taiwan says it suspects a Chinese-crewed ship of damaging an underwater cable this past weekend. The director of the Hong Kong-registered company that owns the vessel told Reuters there is no evidence of that. 

‘Cat and mouse game’

Daniel says leading up to the November incidents, his company had been tracking a surge of activity in the Baltic Sea by shadow tankers that had been increasingly turning off their transmitters, obscuring their location and disappearing from radar systems. 

According to Windward, during the week of Nov. 7, 116 vessels went dark, a 44 per cent increase over what would be expected in the area. 

Daniel said the public should view what is happening as a “cat and mouse” game, where there is an incident followed by a response. 

The U.K. announced on Jan. 6 that it is activating an alert system, dubbed Nordic Warden, as part of the Joint Expeditionary Force, which is made up of 10 countries. The system will use AI to track potential threats in 22 areas, including the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel. If there is potential threat to infrastructure, allies will be alerted. 

Helsinki will host a summit of Baltic Sea NATO leaders next week, but Daniel says a major complicating factor in protecting the infrastructure is that it runs through vast international waters — and it’s not entirely clear which agencies are responsible for protecting it. 

The Estonian government will apply to the International Maritime Organization by February urging it to update the maritime law, which the country says doesn’t deal with underwater damage or cover what should happen if a ship deliberately drags its anchor through critical infrastructure.

Estonia argues modernizing the law would minimize the risk of these types of cases having to wind through through international courts.

Daniel believes European countries have “been caught off guard, 100 per cent” by the incidents in the Baltic Sea. 

“I think Russia and probably China are going after the place, which is probably the hardest for the Western democracies to protect.”