Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo reported that an underwater power cable connecting Finland and Estonia broke in the Baltic Sea on December 25.
"The authorities remain vigilant even during Christmas and are investigating the situation," he wrote, adding that the outage will not affect Finnsʼ electricity supply.
This is the EstLink 2 cable, whose capacity reaches 650 megawatts.
Yle
"The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. However, we are investigating the situation as a whole and will provide additional information when we find the cause," said Arto Pahkin, operations manager of Finnish grid operator Fingrid.
Part of the Fingrid team will inspect the substation, another part will inspect the area between the substation and the sea, and the rest will inspect the submarine cable itself.
What preceded
On November 18, 2024, it became known that an underwater telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany had been broken. It runs alongside other important underwater infrastructure, including gas pipelines and power cables.
Lithuania later reported a break in a communications cable between their country and Sweden. Both incidents came just weeks after the US detected increased Russian military activity around major undersea cables. Germany also believes the incidents were sabotage and a hybrid attack.
The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, citing sources, wrote that the crew of the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 is suspected of severing communication cables in the Baltic Sea. Investigators believe that the crew may have intentionally severed two important data transmission cables while dragging an anchor along the bottom of the Baltic Sea for more than 160 kilometers.
The Yi Peng 3 has a two-man crew: a Chinese captain and a Russian sailor. European investigations are now focused on whether the Chinese captain was recruited by Russian intelligence. Law enforcement officials say it is “extremely unlikely” that the captain did not see the dropped anchor, which slowed the ship for hours and tore cables in its path.
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