Finland suspects an oil tanker from Russia and opens an investigation for “sabotage”

This ship is also suspected of being used by Moscow to export oil illegally, thus circumventing Western sanctions.

The day after the breakdown of an underwater electrical cable in the Baltic Sea, the Finnish police investigation focuses on the tanker Eagle Sfrom Russia. During a press conference in Helsinki on Thursday, December 26, the Finnish authorities announced that they suspected this ship of being involved in the incident that occurred on Wednesday at midday, when the EstLink 2 direct current link between Finland and Estonia, was disconnected from the network.

After this outage, which occurs a little more than a month after the rupture of two telecommunications cables in Swedish territorial waters, the Finnish police opened an investigation to “aggravated sabotage“, said the director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, Robin Lardot.

Flying the flag of the Cook Islands, the Eagle S is suspected of belonging to“a ghost fleet”. He was carrying “unleaded gasoline loaded into a Russian port”, Finnish Customs Director General Sami Rakshit said on Thursday.

At the same time, Finnish President Alexander Stubb called on X on Thursday to “eliminate” THE “risks caused” by the ships of the Russian ghost fleet, made up of ships used by Moscow to export oil illegally, circumventing Western sanctions imposed in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in 2022. Made up of around 600 ships, the Russian ghost fleet transports nearly 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, the British government estimated in July.