By Essi Lehto
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Identifying suspect ships and limiting their activities is the most efficient way to protect critical undersea infrastructure, European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen told Reuters on Monday.
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The NATO military alliance, of which Finland is now a member, has said it will boost its presence in the region.
Virkkunen, who will participate in a Baltic Sea NATO members meeting in Helsinki on Tuesday, is the EU Commission’s new executive vice-president in charge of security.
She said nations bordering the Baltic Sea should better prepare for infrastructure damage and intervene when worrying ships’ movements are detected.
“The most effective way would be to intervene in advance in the traffic and movement of these ships,” Virkkunen said in a telephone interview, referring to “risky ships”, a term she did not elaborate on.
“We need to see what new technologies can be used and how we can share this joint situation picture more effectively and more quickly so that we can combat these risks,” she said.
Finnish police last month seized a tanker carrying Russian oil and said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed.
A lawyer representing the owner of the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S tanker, Caravella LLC FZ, earlier told Reuters that intercepting a ship outside a country’s regional waters was essentially a hijacking.
The Cook Islands maritime authority said in a statement it was investigating the Eagle S case with the assistance of the Finnish government.
Finland’s customs service has said it believes the Eagle S is part of a so-called shadow fleet of tankers Russia uses to circumvent sanctions on its oil.
Moscow has said Finland’s seizure of the ship is not a matter for Russia.
(Reporting by Essi Lehto, editing by Anne Kauranen, Terje Solsvik and Hugh Lawson)
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