(Bloomberg) -- Estonia dispatched a navy ship to patrol a subsea power link a day after Finland seized an oil tanker suspected of damaging five cables with its anchor in what was the third such incident in about a year.
The Raju military vessel was deployed on Friday morning to guard EstLink 1, a 105-kilometer (65-mile) submarine line that connects the electricity systems of the Baltic and Nordic nations across the Baltic Sea after EstLink 2 was damaged by the ship.
“Our assignment is to immediately send a clear message that we are ready to protect connections between Estonia and Finland with military resources,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said in a statement on Friday.
The deployment comes after the Finnish and Estonian governments said the seized oil tanker, the Eagle S, was part of Russia’s shadow fleet and posed a threat to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. Authorities boarded the ship on Thursday and escorted it into Finnish waters.
“When three such incidents happen within about a year, we need to draw the conclusion that they cannot all be a coincidence or an accident,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb told reporters on Friday.
An investigation of the seabed around EstLink2 would start Friday with a border guard patrol vessel headed to the site, Finland’s police said in a statement. A probe on board Eagle S continues with authorities interviewing crew and collecting material. Separately, Sweden’s coastguard said it was strengthening its maritime surveillance of the affected region.
“It’s good that the situation was brought under control so quickly, because if it had continued to drag its anchor on the seabed, more damage would have happened,” he added.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the decision to detain the ship, saying it didn’t fall under the presidential administration’s purview, according to Interfax news agency.
Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the country’s allies to deploy warships to protect undersea infrastructure in the region.
NATO fully supports Estonia and Finland as they investigate possible sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea and take steps to protect critical infrastructure, an official said.
The alliance remains vigilant and is working to provide further support, including by enhancing its military presence in the Baltic Sea, according to the official, who spoke under condition of anonymity.
Among other recent incidents, a high-speed fiber optic cable in the Baltic Sea that connects Finland and Germany was severed last month by what was likely an external impact. A nearby link between Lithuania and Sweden was also damaged, with authorities linking the incidents to Chinese bulk carrier.
Estonia said Thursday that the Baltic nation’s electricity supply wasn’t at risk of being disrupted.
“We have to continue to work together vigilantly to make sure that our critical infrastructure is not damaged by outsiders,” Stubb said. “It’s too soon to draw conclusions yet on why this happened — we know who did it.”
--With assistance from Kevin Whitelaw and Charles Daly.
(Updates with comments from Sweden’s coastguard and Finland’s police force.)
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