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The Finnish electricity grid’s head of operations says sabotage can’t be ruled out
An undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia broke down on Wednesday, Finland’s prime minister said, the latest in a series of incidents involving cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The Finnish electricity grid’s head of operations, Arto Pahkin, told the public broadcaster Yle that sabotage could not be ruled out.
Finland’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said the outage had not affected the country’s electricity supplies.
“The authorities remain vigilant even during Christmas and are investigating the situation,” he wrote on X.
Fingrid said current on the EstLink 2 cable sending electricity to Estonia was cut at 12:26pm local time (10:26 GMT).
Two telecoms cables in the Baltic linking Sweden and Denmark were also cut last month.
Suspicions rapidly fell on the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3, which according to tracking sites had sailed over the cables around the time they were cut.
Sweden said on Monday that China had denied a request for prosecutors to conduct an investigation on the vessel and that it had left the area.
European officials have said they suspect several of the incidents involved sabotage linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has dismissed the claim as “absurd” and “laughable”.
The Arelion cable running from the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania was damaged early on 17 November, and the C-Lion 1 cable connecting Helsinki and the German port of Rostock was cut south of Sweden’s Oland island the next day.
Tensions have mounted around the Baltic since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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A series of underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe in September 2022, but the cause of the blasts has yet to be determined.
An undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down after the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship damaged it in October 2023.
The main image accompanying this article was replaced on 25 December 2024. An earlier version mistakenly showed the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, rather than the Finnish prime minister, Petteri Orpo.
Finland-Estonia power cable hit in latest Baltic Sea incident
