Finnish police said on Wednesday they seized a ship believed to have damaged an undersea telecoms cable which runs from Helsinki to Estonia’s capital Tallinn across the Gulf of Finland, an area hit by suspected sabotage incidents in recent years.
“Finnish authorities have taken control of the vessel as part of a joint operation,” the police said, declining to name the ship or its nationality, or give any further details about the vessel and its crew.
Eight NATO states border the Baltic Sea, which also borders Russia. They have been on high alert after a string of outages of power cables, telecoms links and gas pipelines that run along the relatively shallow seabed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
NATO has boosted its presence in the Baltic with frigates, aircraft and naval drones.
