NATO to boost Baltic Sea presence after suspected undersea cable sabotage
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NATO has said it will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea after undersea power and internet cables were cut between Estonia and Finland. The bloc's secretary general Mark Rutte said he had spoken to Finland's President Alexander Stubb about the "possible sabotage", adding: "NATO will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea".
An undersea power cable and four internet cables were cut or damaged this week. On Thursday, Finland seized a ship, Eagle S, carrying Russian oil on suspicion of causing an outage of the Estlink 2 undersea power cable and of disrupting fibreoptic lines.
Meanwhile, Estonia has launched a naval operation to protect another electricity link, Estlink 1. The country's foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said: "If there is a threat to the critical undersea infrastructure in our region, there will also be a response".
He added that such incidents had become so frequent it was hard to believe they were all caused by accidents. Undersea power cable suffers outage as Baltic Sea countries on edge over series of disruptions. Ukraine war: Why the Baltic states on NATO's frontline with Russia are urging their allies to 'wake up'.
Putin's nuclear threat as Baltic states bolster their armies. The 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 outage began at midday on Wednesday, leaving just the 358MW Estlink 1 connecting Finland and Estonia, grid operators said. Fingrid said that Estlink 2 might not be operational again for "several months".
