On December 27, failures were recorded in three more submarine communication cables between Estonia and Finland.
Elisa Eesti AS and CITIC Telecom CPC reported this to the Estonian Department of Consumer Protection and Technical Supervision (TTJA), Postimees reports.
According to them, the outages do not significantly affect the connection between Finland and Estonia. Two of the cables belong to the Elisa concern, another one to CITIC Telecom. Both companies are already repairing the damage and investigating the causes. The cause of the outages is currently unknown.
Estonia will hold an emergency government meeting today, December 27, followed by a press conference.
Estoniaʼs external connections are highly redundant — in cases where submarine cables are damaged, Estonia uses alternative submarine cables and land lines that pass through Latvia. This ensures a stable cross-border Internet connection.
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 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.
On Christmas Day, the afternoon of December 25, the Estlink 2 submarine power cable between Finland and Estonia broke. Two ships were sailing overhead during the incident.
Finnish law enforcement officers on December 27 stopped the Eagle S vessel, which may be involved in damaging the submarine cable between Finland and Estonia and may belong to Russiaʼs shadow fleet.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.