A Russian-linked oil tanker has been detained in Finland after more undersea communication cables were cut.
The data cables were severed on Christmas day and has lead Finland to ask NATO for help in defending infrastructure against sabotage, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The tanker is apparently a part of a “shadow fleet,” operated by Russia in an attempt to circumvent sanctions against them.
The Journal continues:
Four data cables, three linking Finland and Estonia and one linking Finland and Germany, suffered outages at the same time, Finnish authorities said. One of them, known as C-Lion1, was cut last month in a similar incident involving a Chinese cargo ship. Cinia, the cable owner, said it had dispatched a repair team to fix the cable for the second time in weeks.
The Finnish government and private telecom operators said there was little effect for consumers, as they are able to fall back on reserve cables to avoid data and power disruptions. However, the power cable operator Fingrid said that fixing the 650-megawatt link could take months, and that the country’s power supply could be jeopardized if weather conditions worsen for an extended period.
The Christmas Day cable outages are the latest in a series of incidents involving damage to undersea critical infrastructure belonging to North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries in the Baltics, a region that has become a flashpoint in a shadow war between Russia and the alliance. The incidents have become common since Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and upended relations with Europe and the U.S.
“We want to take action and put an end to this phenomenon,” Finland’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said in a post on X.
Officials argue that the “shadow fleet” is a security threat and something needs to be done to stop it.
Prosecutors in Finland have opened up an investigation into the matter exploring whether criminal charges are appropriate.
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