Shadow Fleet Tanker May Have Been Minutes From Causing More Damage

 

After a NATO summit on Baltic Sea security in Helsinki, Finnish President Alexander Stubb told reporters that the "shadow fleet" tanker Eagle S was just minutes away from inflicting more damage on subsea infrastructure when Finland intervened in her voyage. 

"Had it continued for another 12 minutes, the carnage would have been much worse than the four basic cables that were there," he said. 

Eagle S and nine members of her crew are suspected of breaking four subsea data cables and one power cable linking Finland and Estonia on Christmas Day. According to Finnish police, the vessel dragged its anchor under power for about 50 nautical miles to sever these links on the seabed.

After the first outages were reported, Finland's armed forces quickly deployed a military helicopter with a police tactical boarding team, and the authorities convinced the Eagle S' crew to divert into the jurisdiction of Finland's territorial seas. The tanker was then detained and taken to a secure anchorage for investigation. The anchor was recovered from the seafloor and shows signs of damage.

Finland's National Bureau of Investigation said last week that the Eagle S could have continued on to damage the Estlink 1 subsea power cable and the Balticconnector gas pipeline if no one had intervened - but Stubb's statement Tuesday was the first to acknowledge just how close the tanker came to dredging up other targets on the seabed. 

The Finnish technical investigation is coming to a close, and police are now focusing on analyzing evidence and determining whether there was intent to cause disruption. On Monday, the EU's technological sovereignty and security chief told Bloomberg that there is no chance that the repeated damage to subsea infrastructure in the Baltic could be an accident. 

"It can’t really be by accident if these are happening many times a year," European Commission EVP for tech security Henna Virkkunen said.