Finnish authorities are investigating a disruption in an undersea power cable between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish government has not ruled out sabotage as the cause of the outage.
Prime Minister Orpo has stated that the incident has no impact on electricity supply. Finnish news outlet Iltalehti reported that a Hong Kong container ship, the Xin Xin Tian 2, was near the cable at the time of the disruption.
The ship had departed St. Petersburg last night and is en route to Port Said in Egypt, near the Suez Canal. Authorities in the region remain vigilant against potential sabotage after a series of disruptions affecting power cables, gas pipelines, and telecoms in the Baltic Sea in recent years.
Technical malfunctions and accidents are also considered possibilities; earlier in the month, damage to internet cables in Finland was initially suspected to be intentional but was later attributed to excavation work. In a related event, a data cable in the Baltic Sea was damaged in November, likely due to sabotage, near the Swedish island of Öland.
The Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 is a prime suspect, having been stationary off Denmark’s coast. A team of experts from Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland was allowed to board the ship last week, but it is unclear if any evidence of sabotage was found.
Source: NOS