The last maneuvers of Russia They have set off all the alarms. Their so-called “ghost fleets”, dedicated to oil trafficking, have been operating in the shadows for years, but now it seems that they have taken a step further after the successive cuts of submarine cables that are occurring in European waters. The last of them, on Christmas Day itself, when the Estlink 2 cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia, was cut and three others were also damaged.
These facts have led the Finnish authorities to take action and have actually detained the person allegedly involved in this action, the oil tanker Eagle SL, now detained in Finnish waters. Given all this, the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, has announced that The Atlantic Alliance will increase its military presence in the Baltic Sea after the failures recorded in the EstLink2.
Rutte spoke by phone with the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, about the investigation opened by Helsinki against possible “sabotage” to the cablewhich connects both countries through the Gulf of Finland, according to a message published on the social network X.
Stubb, who the day before also had a telephone conversation with the Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michalconfirmed at a press conference that NATO will strengthen its presence around critical European infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
The Finnish Police announced this Friday that they will begin investigating the seabed around the ship ‘Eagle S’, which sis currently being held off the coast of Porkkalaabout 30 kilometers from the capital, Helsinki.
The Finnish Border Guard has increased its level of preparedness to prevent oil spills, while the Swedish maritime authorities They have strengthened traffic controls, as reported by the SVT television network. For his part, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur announced early this morning that the Navy will begin protecting the underwater cable with patrol boats to ensure connections between Estonia and Finland.
“Not an important issue” for Russia
The director general of Customs, Sami Rahskit, has indicated that the ship investigated belongs to the so-called “shadow fleet” of Russia, although the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, has assured that the breakage of the cable “not an important issue” for the Russian Presidencyas reported by the TASS news agency.
According to initial investigations, Finnish Border Guard forces detained the ship, although the tanker’s anchors did not surface. The ‘Eagle S’, with the Cook Islands flag, It was carrying refilled gasoline from a Russian port.
The Finnish authorities are thus investigating whether the ship belongs to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, vessels from third countries that help transport goods prohibited to Russia or to benefit the Kremlin within the framework of the sanctions imposed by Western countries in retaliation for the war in Ukraine.
According to sources from the British newspaper Lloyd’s List, The ship had high-tech spy equipment – whose function was to listen to the radio conversations of NATO aircraft – which consumed more energy than the generator could support, which caused repeated blackouts on the ship.
Berlin assures that it is a “great threat”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, has also spoken about these events, who has come to describe this as a “great threat.” “Russian ghost fleet.” “The current incident demonstrates once again that the often decrepit ‘ghost fleet’, to which the ship now held by Finland belongs, is a major threat to our environment and our security,” Baerbock said in a statement this Saturday. to the newspapers of the German media group Funke Mediengruppe.
Regarding the recent breaks of submarine cables in the Baltic Sea, Baerbock pointed out that these incidents are “an alarm signal.” “It is an urgent alarm signal for all of us. In a digitalized world, submarine cables are the communication arteries that hold our world together,” he said.
“Currently, ships damage important underwater cables in the Baltic Sea almost every month. The crews of the ships drop anchors into the water, They drag them for kilometers along the seabed for no apparent reason,” added the German minister.
The truth is that fifty ships have been subject to EU sanctions since mid-December for their links to the “Russian ghost fleet”, which is considered part of thes tools of Russia in its hybrid warfare operations.
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