Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) discovered anchor drag marks on the seabed after mapping it from start to finish. However, Finnish news outlet Helsingin Sanomat reports that the authorities are still looking for the anchor that caused the damage. NBI Detective Chief Inspector Sami Paila says, “So far, a possible anchor detachment point has not been confirmed.”
The investigation focuses on the Eagle S, suspected of dragging its anchor on Christmas Day to cut the Estlink 2 power cable and several other internet and communications cables connecting Finland and Estonia. Authorities have already boarded the ship, but its anchor is reportedly missing. The authorities then sailed the Eagle S into Finland's territorial waters. They moved it to an even more secure anchorage in Svartbäck to facilitate the investigation, with other ships restricted from approaching the ship to maintain security. Its crew has also remained aboard for further questioning, with Finnish Customs authorities also looking into its cargo.
“The vessel’s captain and crew have remained on board and active during the move [from its original stopping point]. Once anchored, we will resume investigative procedures, focusing on whether this ship caused the damage,” said Helsinki Police Superintendent Heikki Porola to Finland’s national broadcasting company Yle.
The investigators discovered anchor drag marks on the seabed just a day after moving the ship. “East of that point, there are several tens of kilometers [of dragging], if we are not talking about almost a hundred kilometers,” says Paila. He added, “The track ends where the ship lifted the anchor chain.”
Because of this, Finland is adding aggravated telecommunications interference to the charges against the Eagle S and its crew. This is in addition to the initial aggravated arson charge and the aggravated regulation offense that Finland customs is investigating regarding the oil cargo it carries.
Sources say the Eagle S is part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a collection of poorly maintained ships with murky ownership and registration that the country uses to circumvent sanctions and smuggle its oil exports despite the embargoes.
This is the second such incident in the last two months. In mid-November, a Chinese vessel, Yi Peng 3, is suspected of cutting undersea cables connecting Lithuania to Sweden and Germany to Finland. Underwater cameras also revealed drag marks that coincided with the vessel's maneuvers, further proving that it dragged its anchor to cause the damage.
Related:
• Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
• Chinese Ship's Crew Suspected of Deliberately Dragging Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables
Related Stories
Chinese Ship's Crew Suspected of Deliberately Dragging Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables:
A Chinese commercial vessel that has been surrounded by European warships in international waters for [several weeks] is central to an investigation of suspected sabotage that threatens to test the limits of maritime law—and heighten tensions between Beijing and European capitals.
Investigators suspect that the crew of the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier—225 meters long, 32 meters wide and loaded with Russian fertilizer—deliberately severed two critical data cables last week as its anchor was dragged along the Baltic seabed for over 100 miles.
Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the Chinese-owned ship, which departed the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was induced by Russian intelligence to carry out the sabotage. It would be the latest in a series of attacks on Europe's critical infrastructure that law-enforcement and intelligence officials say have been orchestrated by Russia.
"It's extremely unlikely that the captain would not have noticed that his ship dropped and dragged its anchor, losing speed for hours and cutting cables on the way," said a senior European investigator involved in the case.
Related: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=24/11/20/2252220
Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Sabotage isn’t ruled out yet.
Estlink 2, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia, has unexpectedly been disrupted at around 12:26 pm local time (10:26 am GMT) on Christmas Day. While Finland Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that the outage hasn’t affected the country’s power supply, Reuters said that it did reduce the availability capacity between the two countries to 358 megawatts from its designed 1,106-megawatt installed capacity. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of two undersea internet cables that connect Finland and Sweden to the rest Europe.
At the time of the incident, some 658 megawatts of power have been flowing from Finland to Estonia, says Finnish national electricity transmission operator Fingrid. Estonia’s electricity transmission operator Elering has also acknowledged the incident but is yet to report any disruption in its electrical supply.
There are two undersea power cables between Finland and Estonia—Estlink 1, which is west of Helsinki and Tallinna and has a capacity of 350 megawatts, and Estlink 2, which lies east of both cities and has a larger capacity of 650 megawatts. Finnish public broadcaster Yle says that Estlink 2 was unserviceable for several months earlier this year as it was undergoing maintenance, but the connection has since been restored in September. Because of this, Fingrid Operations Manager Arto Pahkin said that action by external forces could not be discounted.
“The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. However, we are examining the situation as a whole and will provide information once the cause is identified,” says Pahkin. He also said, “An investigation into the incident has been initiated.” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo also weighed in on the matter, saying on X (formerly Twitter) (machine translated), “Authorities are still on standby over Christmas and are investigating the matter.”
An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, triggering an investigation by local and NATO maritime forces in the Baltic Sea:
"We have determined that there is most likely external damage and that it is significant," Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina told reporters following an extraordinary government meeting.
Latvia is coordinating with NATO and the countries of the Baltic Sea region to clarify the circumstances, she said separately in a post on X.
Latvia's navy earlier on Sunday said it had dispatched a patrol boat to inspect a ship and that two other vessels were also subject to investigation.
From Zerohedge's coverage:
Over the past 18 months, three alarming incidents have been reported in which commercial ships traveling to or from Russian ports are suspected of severing undersea cables in the Baltic region.
Washington Post recently cited Western officials who said these cable incidents are likely maritime accidents - not sabotage by Russia and/or China.
Due to all the cable severing risks, intentional and unintentional, a report from late November via TechCrunch [linked by submitter] said Meta planned a new "W" formation undersea cable route around the world to "avoid areas of geopolitical tension."
Related:
- NATO Plans to Build Satellite Links as Backups to Undersea Cables
- Finnish Investigators Discover Anchor Drag Marks of "Almost a Hundred Kilometers" in Cable Case
- Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
- Two Undersea Internet Cables Connecting Finland and Sweden to Europe Have Been Cut
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Username on Saturday January 04 2025, @05:46PM (7 children)
>Sources say the Eagle S is part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a collection of poorly maintained ships with murky ownership and registration that the country uses to circumvent sanctions and smuggle its oil exports despite the embargoes.
I like conspiracy theories and all, but the language used, poorly, murky, etc just screams propaganda. A country doesn't smuggle anything. If Russia wants to ship oil in international waters, good luck stopping them. I doubt they're afraid of Finland.
I have a feeling it's people who live in nato country, where the oil is banned, who feel the need to smuggle it in.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04 2025, @07:39PM
> If Russia wants to ship oil in international waters, good luck stopping them.
I think there is a different issue you've missed, from memory of an article I saw fairly recently:
The Russian shadow fleet of mostly older tankers operates without normal insurance. Without the insurance companies (who inspect the ships they insure) as part of the package, oil spills are much more likely.
Yes, on one hand "international waters" are not owned by any country, on the other hand the oceans are important to all of us. And until this recent breach of international rules (treaties?) by Russia, oil shipping has been fairly safe. Another version of "tragedy of the commons."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04 2025, @10:28PM
Go fuck yourself little sad troll. You know nothing about this. It wasn't about the gasoline in the ship, moron. The ship broke the electrical and communication cables.
Russia breaks every fucking international law and sense of any kind of justice and causes damages like no one else and nothing should be done about that? Fuck you!
More like Finland!
------
Slava Ukraini! Slay the orcs!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday January 04 2025, @10:39PM (4 children)
International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage [soylentnews.org] and why the ownership becomes important.
Illuminating Russia’s Shadow Fleet [windward.ai]
Some numbers on the volume of oil transported by the shadow/dark fleet [oxan.com]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05 2025, @12:53AM
If they want that oil to keep "flowing", they shouldn't be dragging anchor and breaking stuff.
Russia's access to the oceans isn't that great in terms of reaching buyers for that oil...
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday January 05 2025, @04:53AM (2 children)
Your first link is borked. Second link - nice web site but I have no idea who these people are. Also no methodology detailed as far as I can see from a quick skim.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday January 05 2025, @05:19AM (1 child)
Sorry for that, here's the first link to relieve you from the burden of searching the exact text in your favorite search engine.
https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International-Convention-on-Civil-Liability-for-Oil-Pollution-Damage-(CLC).aspx [imo.org]
Other links on Windward
https://maritime-executive.com/article/windward-maritime-intelligence-business-agrees-to-buyout-from-u-s-investor [maritime-executive.com]
https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/content/adc6b4b1-d24f-5b19-baa9-baaa23b3bd2e [investorschronicle.co.uk]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday January 11 2025, @04:52AM
Sorry, I haven't had time to respond to you until now.
My point was that I don't have much in the way of context if you just post a link to a web site, which makes it hard to make a judgement about the accuracy of the content. The site looks professional and has all of the things I would expect from such a site so there is that, which gives me some degree of certainty, but not a lot.
So great, there are now a couple more contextless sites referencing the company purported to be the owners of the original site, which makes it more probable that the information is accurate but still it's just random stuff out there. I have no ongoing relationship or background to those publications and I suspect neither do you, it was just the first results that came up in a search engine.