Finland reports damage to undersea power cable with Estonia in latest Baltic Sea incident

ISTANBUL

Finnish authorities announced Wednesday that an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia had been damaged, marking the latest in a series of incidents involving critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

Finnish power grid operator Fingrid said the Estlink 2 interconnector went offline at 12:26 pm local time (1026GMT).

Speaking to public broadcaster Yle, Arto Pahkin, Fingrid’s head of operations, said sabotage could not be ruled out and investigations are continuing.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo assured citizens that the outage had not impacted Finland’s electricity supply.

“The authorities remain vigilant even during Christmas and are investigating the situation,” Orpo wrote on X.

The Baltic Sea has been the scene of several high-profile infrastructure incidents since the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which heightened tensions in the region.

The latest incident follows the October shutdown of a Finnish-Estonian undersea gas pipeline after the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship reportedly damaged it.

Last month, two telecommunications cables linking Sweden and Denmark were severed. Authorities suspect the Chinese vessel Yi Peng 3, which sailed over the cables, but China denied Sweden’s request to investigate the ship.

The Arelion submarine cable, which connects the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania, and the C-Lion 1 submarine communications cable that runs between Helsinki, Finland and Rostock, Germany were also damaged in mid-November near Sweden’s territorial waters.

European officials have suggested that sabotage could be behind the recent disruptions, potentially linked to Russia’s ongoing conflict in Ukraine. But the Kremlin has rejected the claims, calling them “absurd” and “laughable.”

The September 2022 explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines carrying Russian gas to Europe remain unresolved, underscoring the region’s vulnerability to undersea attacks on key infrastructure.

Authorities across the Baltic region continue to investigate these incidents amid heightened vigilance as geopolitical tensions show no sign of abating.

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