A Nato flotilla likened to “the security camera of the Baltic” has assembled off the coast of Estonia as the military alliance seeks to protect European undersea cables and pipelines from sabotage.
In a move that ratchets up a struggle with Russia over the seabed that has remained largely covert until now, a Dutch frigate and naval research ship, as well as a German minesweeper have all arrived in Tallinn under a thick January sea fog.
A French minesweeper is expected and more Nato vessels are on the way in support of a joint effort, called Baltic Sentry, that was agreed in Helsinki last week.
“The group will grow in the near future, with other ships joining us, so in the end, we will be about six, seven ships,” said Cmdr Erik Kockx, the Belgian head of a mine countermeasures taskforce that has been drawn into Baltic Sentry.
“We will in the first case function as the security cameras of the Baltic Sea, which means that nobody can undertake any actions against critical underwater infrastructure without us having seen them and being able to react in a proper way.”
The latest incident which triggered the Nato response took place on Christmas Day when the Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia, and four data cables were damaged, according to Finnish authorities, by an oil tanker, the Eagle S, dragging its anchor along the seabed for 60 miles (100km) until it snagged on the cables.
The Eagle S was ordered into Finnish territorial waters, boarded by a special police squad descending from helicopters, and is now detained off the small port of Porvoo, east of Helsinki. The ship was found to be missing an anchor that was later salvaged from the seabed where it appears to have separated from its chains, and nine of the crew have been banned from leaving Finland while the inquiry is under way.
The Eagle S embodies the grey, amorphous nature of the tense situation in this corner of the Baltic, where it is hard to distinguish between careless accidents and deliberate acts of hybrid warfare.
The 74,000-tonne Chinese-built tanker has had three previous names, and is now sailing under the flag of the Cook Islands, owned by a corporation in Dubai but managed by an Indian company, with a Georgian captain and a Georgian-Indian crew.
The ship was reportedly on its way from the Russian port of Ust-Luga with 35,000 tonnes of petrol bound for Turkey. Nato and the Finnish authorities believe it is part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” of vessels from around the world quietly commissioned by Moscow to transport Russian oil in defiance of sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The working theory of the Finnish police is that ships and crews that can be commissioned to bust sanctions can also be hired to carry out sabotage.
The Eagle S’s Dubai-based owner, Caravella, has denied the allegations and challenged the ship’s detention through its Finnish lawyer, Herman Ljungberg.
“The vessel and its master, which I represent, has not been provided with any information of the investigations,” Ljungberg said in a written statement to the Guardian.
“We have not given any decisions nor legal basis for the boarding which took place over three weeks ago which I dare to call the action of hijacking.”
Ljungberg said the seizure of the Eagle S contravened the law of the sea and the Finnish criminal code.
“The Finnish authorities did not have jurisdiction whatsoever to board the vessel and conduct investigations. FULL STOP,” the lawyer wrote.
It has emerged that the Eagle S was also involved in an incident off the Dutch coast in November, in which it was allegedly observed to sail to and fro over the Atlantic Crossing 1, a telecommunications cable linking the US to Britain, the Netherlands and Germany.
The shipping website Lloyd’s List cited an anonymous source as saying the tanker was found to be “loaded with spying equipment”, including sensors that had been dropped over the side of the ship. According to Finnish authorities, however, no unusual equipment was found when it was boarded in December.
The Eagle S incident is the third time in recent months that critical infrastructure on the Baltic seabed has been damaged in murky circumstances. In October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was sheared by the anchor of a Hong Kong-flagged container ship, the Newnew Polar Bear. The Chinese government conducted an investigation and admitted the ship was responsible but claimed it was an accident.
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On 20 November, another Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, was accused of dragging its anchor over two fibre-optic communications cables, one running between Finland and Germany, the other between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland.
Again the Chinese government carried out its own investigation but despite a pledge of cooperation, Beijing did not allow Swedish investigators onboard and the Yi Peng 3 left the Baltic while the Swedish inquiry was still under way. The two incidents raised questions over whether China too had become a protagonist in hybrid warfare in the Baltic.
“One can say that incidents in which the undersea infrastructure is damaged are very frequent worldwide. However, in the Baltic Sea, we have not witnessed such a string of episodes with most important strategic infrastructure – gas pipelines, power lines, and major data cables – since it became operational,” Tomas Jermalavičius, the head of studies at Tallinn’s International Centre for Defence and Security, said.
The severing of the Estlink 2 on Christmas Day has not led to immediate power cuts, as supplies have been diverted from elsewhere in the grid, but it will take months to repair during which time the region’s power supply will be significantly more fragile.
The breach came at a time of heightening tension leading up to 8 February when the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, will sever one of the last vestiges of their distant Soviet past and decouple their power networks from the Russia energy grid, synchronising with the European grid instead through a power link to Poland.
“Moscow would certainly be interested in disrupting the process of our desynchronisation (perhaps even preventing it from happening), raising its costs, and discrediting the Baltic governments by causing chaos, confusion, and fear,” Jermalavičius said. “The prospect of power blackouts is a chilling one.”
The Dutch head of the Nato marine group assigned to protect the seabed infrastructure, Commodore Arjen Warnaar, had few doubts about who was responsible for the Estlink 2 rupture.
“That is something that is still being evaluated and we’re always keeping that possibility in mind,” Warnaar said on Friday, speaking on the bridge of the Dutch frigate Tromp, moored in Tallinn.
Asked if there was another possibility, he replied: “Yes – aliens.”
When Baltic Sentry was agreed by Baltic Nato members at a summit meeting in Helsinki on Tuesday, the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, described the recent incidents as “possible sabotage” and underlined the stakes in protecting the undersea energy and internet cables, noting that 1.3m km of undersea cables were responsible for an estimated $10tn (£8.2tn) worth of financial transactions every day.
“Ship captains must understand that potential threats to our infrastructure will have consequences, including possible boarding, impounding, and arrest,” Rutte said.
The naval taskforce assembling in Tallinn can draw on Nato members’ intelligence on shipping, surveillance from the air and space, underwater sonars repurposed from hunting mines, drone submersibles and a new generation of underwater sensors.
“Any ship that is leaving St Petersburg will know that it is being followed,” Kockx said. “And if that ship has the intention to undertake any unlawful actions, it will think twice.”
