HS: Elisa’s submarine cable damaged between Finland and Estonia, suspected ship taken over by Finnish officials

https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000011723060.html

by Relzu13

28 comments

  1. First Nord Stream, now this Europe’s cables are starting to feel like the plot of a spy thriller.

  2. At what point do we use a plough of some sort to bury these cables?

    Still can be scraped of course, but at least mapping them would be trickier. 

  3. And the morons were stupid enough to venture into the Finnish waters after pulling the cable up, so easy pickings legally & operationally.

    *Enter “We’re lucky they’re so fucking stupid” meme*

    Edit: the news had corrected earlier where the ship was found from Finnish waters to Finnish EZZ. Still morons, but at least someone in the boat knew how to read a map.

  10. Arrest the crew and scuttle the ship. It’s the only way they learn; and the only way insurance companies learn not to insure Russian shadow fleets.

    If you do business with Russia, this is what you should expect.

  11. This is not a “hybrid war.” It is war, plain and simple. Sabotage strikes on comunication channels to disrupt the information flow.

  12. i dont understand the point of all of this half assed espionage. its not accomplishing anything it seems, just creating a bunch of headaches for everyone and harming the environment

  14. The prosecutory failure of the 2024 Estlink 2 incident probably emboldened Russia to start doing this again.

  15. “The ship suspected of damaging Elisa’s cable was en route from Russia to Israel. According to the Estonian Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, the Swedish company’s cable has also been severed.”

    “The vessel’s flag state is the small island nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, located in the Caribbean Sea.”

  16. take the ship down and give lifetime prison to each member, ask NATO for article 5 against Russia

  17. I will bot even ask where the crew is from bit I will say this.

    Beat them up! And next day again. Release them somewhere far up north.

  19. I just wish the officials would start confiscating ships until further notice and send the owner companies messages that confiscations will continue until the accidents stop happening. Also maximum penalties that the law allows to the crew that nobody would volunteer to do that anymore. They can send every captain to CECOT for all I care.

  20. **This is now known – The vessel suspected of damaging the Elisa cable was on its way from Russia to Israel. According to the Estonian Ministry, the Swedish company’s cable has also been broken.**

    According to HS, the Finnish authorities have taken possession of a vessel named Fitburg, which is suspected of damaging Elisa’s data cable in the Gulf of Finland.

    At this stage, the police are investigating the events under the criminal titles of suspected aggravated damage, suspected attempted aggravated damage and suspected aggravated interference with telecommunications.

    **Two** cables have been damaged in the Gulf of Finland between Finland and Estonia. One of the cables is owned by the telecommunications operator Elisan, and the other is owned by Arelion, a Swedish telecommunications service provider, according to Estonia.

    According to Elisa, the disturbance was detected on Wednesday at five in the morning. The Helsinki Police Department has said that the damage to the Elisa cable is suspected to have been caused by the vessel. According to HS, it is a ship called Fitburg.

    This is all we know about the incident now.

    # The ship’s anchor chain was in the sea

    According to the Helsinki Police, the Border Guard received information from Elisa about the cable fault. Later, the Finnish Border Guard located the vessel. The ship’s anchor chain was found to be in the sea.

    The Finnish authorities have taken possession of the vessel. According to HS’s two sources, the ship in question, named Fitburg, has been off Porkkala, and the Finnish authorities have landed on the ship from a helicopter. Ships were also involved in the operation.

    According to the Marinetraffic service, which monitors ship traffic, the vessel departed from St. Petersburg, Russia, on Tuesday and was on its way to Israel. The ship’s flag state is the small island nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean Sea.

    The site of damage to the Elisa cable is located in the Estonian exclusive economic zone. The Finnish Border Guard’s patrol vessel Turva and a helicopter met the suspected vessel in Finland’s exclusive economic zone. The vessel was asked to stop, lift up the anchor chain and move to a safe anchorage in Finnish territorial waters.

    # Police investigating suspected crimes

    According to the press release, the police are investigating the events at this stage under the criminal titles of suspected aggravated damage, suspected attempted aggravated damage and suspected aggravated interference with telecommunications.

    “At this stage, it is still too early to assess whether it is a deliberate act or an accident,” says [Heikki Kopperoinen](https://www.hs.fi/haku/?query=Heikki%20Kopperoinen), Deputy Chief of the Helsinki Police Department, to HS.

    According to the Deputy Prosecutor General, the initial information is flimsy, but the threshold for a pre-trial investigation has been exceeded.

    “However, there are such strong indications of a crime that the threshold for a pre-trial investigation has been exceeded and I have ordered a pre-trial investigation to be initiated,” Deputy Prosecutor General [Jukka Rappe](https://www.hs.fi/haku/?query=Jukka%20Rappe) told HS.

  21. So, Russia will keep doing this, because it’s worth doing.

    What is a proportional response that makes it not worth doing for Russia?

  22. EU should just bomb these ships. US is doing it with “drug trafficking” ships, so there is a precedent already. 

  23. Maybe we should enact a cable tax for all ships going to Russia through Gulf of Finland

  25. Why don’t we do the same to the orcs? Sabotaging their stuff inland and flooding them with misinformation. It would be just fair at this point

  26. Maybe we need a tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki. It can house all the needed cables too, so that this doesn’t happen yet again.

    Would it be costly? Absolutely. Is it worth it? Fuck yes. Not just because of the cables. For security reasons, it’d allow to much easier transport supplies to finland if needed. Rail Baltica should finish in Finland.

  27. Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan were the nationalities of the crew.

    Not random Indians or Chinese this time.

  28. God just see these as attacks on NATO nations already when lets be honest its RUSSIA. Get it over with already

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