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Finnish Police Investigate Foreign Ship In Undersea Power Cable Damage

Workers install the 2Africa undersea cable on the beach in Amanzimtoti

Finnish police are currently investigating a potential involvement of a foreign ship in the damage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia. This investigation comes in the wake of a sudden outage that occurred on Wednesday, affecting the 658 megawatt Estlink 2 power interconnector. As a result of the outage, only the 358 MW Estlink 1 is currently operational between the two countries, according to operator Fingrid.

The Baltic Sea nations have been on high alert for possible acts of sabotage following a series of outages affecting power cables, telecom links, and gas pipelines since 2022. While technical malfunctions and accidents are also common causes of such disruptions, authorities are actively looking into potential sabotage as well.

Finnish police, in collaboration with the Border Guard and other relevant authorities, are working to unravel the chain of events surrounding the recent incident. The focus of the investigation is on determining whether a foreign ship played a role in the damage to the undersea power cable, although the specific vessel in question has not been named.

Meanwhile, Swedish authorities are leading an investigation into a recent breach of two Baltic Sea telecom cables. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has suggested that this breach may have been an act of sabotage. Additionally, Finnish police are continuing their investigation into the damage caused last year to the Balticconnector gas pipeline connecting Finland and Estonia, as well as multiple telecom cables. Authorities suspect that a ship dragging its anchor may have been responsible for these incidents.

In a separate incident in 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany along the seabed in the same waters were reportedly blown up. German authorities are still investigating this case, which adds to the heightened concerns regarding the security of critical infrastructure in the region.

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