The breakdown of an underwater cable between Finland and Estonia on Wednesday is a “wake-up call” for Berlin, which is pushing for new EU sanctions. Behind this incident, the Europeans suspect an act of sabotage by the “Russian ghost fleet”.
KEYSTONE
“At an almost monthly rate, ships are currently damaging important submarine cables in the Baltic Sea. “Ship crews leave anchors in the water, drag them for kilometers along the seabed for no apparent reason, and then lose them on the way back up,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock accuses in a statement to the Funke media group. Mediengruppe Saturday.
“It is more than difficult to believe in coincidences anymore. This is an urgent wake-up call for all of us,” added the head of German diplomacy. It calls for new “EU sanctions against the Russian ghost fleet,” a term for ships that carry embargoed Russian crude oil and petroleum products.
In addition to constituting “a major threat to our environment and our security”, this fleet is used by Moscow “to finance its war of aggression in Ukraine”, underlines the minister.
Several incidents
On Christmas Day, the EstLink 2 direct current link between Finland and Estonia disconnected from the grid. The suspect vessel, an oil tanker leaving from a Russian port, was boarded by Finland. This incident comes a little more than a month after the rupture of two telecommunications cables in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.
The European Union on Thursday condemned “any deliberate destruction of Europe’s essential infrastructure” and announced it was preparing new sanctions against Russian ships. EU countries agreed earlier this month to blacklist around 50 additional tankers from the fleet.
Discussions are also taking place between NATO partners in order to “better protect the Baltic Sea against hybrid threats”, underlined Annalena Baerbock.
Swiss
