New telecommunications cable damage discovered in Finland\u2019s exclusive economic zone.<\/p>\n
Published On 31 Dec 202531 Dec 2025<\/p>\n
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Finnish authorities have seized a vessel suspected of intentionally severing undersea telecommunications cables amid fears of Russian sabotage in the Gulf of Finland.<\/p>\n
The seized cargo vessel Fitburg was en route from the Russian port of St Petersburg \u2060to Israel at the time of the incident on Wednesday, Finnish Border Guard officials said at a news conference in Helsinki.<\/p>\n
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The Fitburg was dragging its anchor in \u200cthe sea and was directed to Finnish territorial waters, the police and Border Guard said.<\/p>\n
Helsinki police opened an investigation into potential aggravated criminal damage and aggravated interference with telecommunications.<\/p>\n
The Fitburg\u2019s 14 crew members were from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and were all detained by Finnish police, investigators said. The ship sailed under the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinland is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary,\u201d Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Part of the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland is bordered by Estonia, Finland and Russia. The area has been hit by a string of similar incidents in recent years.<\/p>\n
The undersea cable belongs to telecommunications service provider Elisa and is considered to be critical underwater infrastructure for Finland.<\/p>\n
The company said in a statement the cable damage has \u201cnot affected the functionality of Elisa\u2019s services in any way\u201d, noting services have been rerouted. Earlier, Elisa said it had detected a fault in its cable and reported it to Finnish authorities.<\/p>\n
NATO has boosted its presence in the Baltic with frigates, aircraft and naval drones in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain in contact with the Finnish authorities through exchange of information via the NATO shipping centre located at our Allied Maritime Command in Northwood, UK,\u201d an official at the military alliance said.<\/p>\n
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A deliberate act?<\/p>\n
Estonia\u2019s Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs said a second telecoms cable connecting \u200cthe country to Finland also suffered an outage on Wednesday. It\u2019s unclear whether the incidents are related.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned about the reported damage. \u2026 Hopefully it was not a deliberate act, but the investigation will clarify,\u201d Estonian President Alar Karis said on X.<\/p>\n
Energy and communications infrastructure, including underwater cables and pipelines, have been damaged in the Baltic Sea in recent years.<\/p>\n
Since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many security analysts and political leaders have viewed cable sabotage as part of a \u201chybrid war\u201d carried out by Russia against NATO countries and their allies.<\/p>\n
On Christmas Day 2024, the Cook Islands-registered oil tanker Eagle S cut five cables in the Gulf of Finland after dragging its anchor on the seabed for 90km (56 miles).<\/p>\n
In October, Helsinki\u2019s District Court ruled it did not have jurisdiction to hear a case against the ship\u2019s three senior officers. It said it was up to the vessel\u2019s flag state or the defendants\u2019 home countries \u2013 Georgia and India \u2013 to try them<\/p>\n
Finnish prosecutors have appealed the ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New telecommunications cable damage discovered in Finland\u2019s exclusive economic zone. Published On 31 Dec 202531 Dec 2025 Click…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[1112,299,769,12,332],"class_list":{"0":"post-665516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-estonia","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-finland","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115816417504115149","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}