On Christmas Day, 25 December 2024, the EstLink 2 power transmission cable, which connects Finland and Estonia, suffered an unexpected failure, significantly reducing the cross-border capacity between the two countries.
The outage, which occurred at 12:26 PM, resulted in a reduction from 1,016 megawatts (MW) to 358 MW, with Finnish transmission system operator Fingrid confirming the loss of connection. At the time of the disruption, electricity was flowing from Finland to Estonia at a rate of 658 MW.
Initial concerns about potential sabotage have been raised, especially in light of recent incidents involving undersea cables in the Baltic region. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo confirmed that the authorities are investigating the incident, including the possibility of foreign involvement. The investigation follows a string of similar disruptions involving subsea cables, telecom links, and gas pipelines in recent years.
By the evening of 25 December, Finnish Border Guard authorities were escorting the tanker Eagle S, a vessel registered to the Cook Islands and suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet. The ship had been sailing in the vicinity of the EstLink 2 cable at the time of the outage. After initially failing to drop its anchor, the vessel was boarded by authorities at 00:28 on 26 December. The police are investigating the crew and their actions, though the nationalities of those on board have not yet been made public.
Meanwhile, there were reports of disturbances in other infrastructure, with several telecommunications cables leaving Finland experiencing significant damage, two of which were completely severed. Authorities have stated that the failure of the EstLink 2 cable is being treated with high priority, although the exact cause remains unclear at this stage.
The EstLink 2 cable plays a crucial role in the energy grid between Finland and Estonia, and any disruption to its operation can have far-reaching implications. However, Estonia has confirmed that its power supply was not disrupted as the country had enough spare capacity to meet its needs during the outage.
The ongoing inquiry aims to determine whether the failure was due to technical malfunction or possible sabotage, as tensions in the region continue to rise.
These cable incidents make no sense unless Russia is doing it and intentionally making it look like it’s Chinese flagged vessels. Three separate incidents all Chinese vessels but why would China do this makes zero sense.
Spmeone is pouring hot water on the ants nest to see which way the ants run. Russia has been poking at us for 20 years to test Western resolve. No change there.
Exactly.
The level of grey war is being ratcheted up and up.
They simply don’t care if we know and are laughing at our impotence and our total inability to actually start doing anything like spending money….
China has been fighting a war with the west since 2013, it’s simply a war that the west does not understand and cannot get its head around engaging in..you can be fight a war without getting your tanks, bombs and warships out..the west has completely forgotten this.
What is the benefit to China of cutting cables in the Baltic?
Agreed, Russia is doing everything short of actually firing munitions at NATO. Plausible deniability keeps things below Article V, but surely the politicians must release the inevitability of Russia crossing that line at a time of its choosing?…
could backfire on them.this is the kind of work that say Pollock an rammed version of Cetus could do in a group following up and down the cable route in a remote controlled Wolfpack.we should prioritise the patrolling of THEIR CABLES.
It has long been my concern that the Russians would go too far with the grey area warfare. They are certainly pushing the envelope and sooner or later they will go too far and the poop will hit the fan. It only takes one accident for the situation to pass a tipping point. As the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 demonstrates one event might not tip us into a war but it could tip us into an undeniable pre-war condition. The sinking of the Lusitania dramatically changed attitudes in the USA which in turn lead to them joining the… Read more »
we need a fleet of Cetus like vessels as a very big force multiplayer as long as the
Americans get to be in charge and the french don’t decide to give it a miss Americans long as Americans like drones operating all over the globe I wonder how long it takes to make one
Because china is totally committed to the idea of politics warfare, they don’t see warfare in the same way as the west. They are not “ at peace” and then “at war”. If they consider yiu any enemy ( and they do consider the west an enemy) then they are always at war with you and always undertaking and political warfare actions. Because every moment and every action matters, every little Facebook or ticktick post that undermines trust in government or makes the population a bit less happy, every power cut at Christmas..it all has meaning it all reduces the… Read more »
Absolutely agree. The west is vulnerable economically and politically, probably more so now than since 1930s and China will continue to slowly eat away at the west and expand it’s own sphere of influence.
Why would china be doing anything that it is doing? You know… Like altering public opinion via TikTok or having CCP officials pretend to be students in UK in order to intimidate other chinese students into not becoming too westernised? Or setting up CCP police stations across the world in order to easily track and intimidate the local Chinese populations. Or flooding western markets with cars that are sold for a loss. What about CCP officials attacking protesters in the UK or Australia etc? It is in both China and Russia’s interests to destabilise the west and to push their… Read more »
The objective is to achieve destabilisation and to observe, particularly in the context of undersea cables, the preventative and reactionary measures that these nations might implement in response to Russian and Chinese shipping activities.
With regard to the relevant treaties, is it within Denmark’s jurisdiction to close the Baltic Sea to Chinese shipping? If such an action is permissible, what responses might Russia and China undertake? If it is not allowable, what recourse do the nations affected have? Furthermore, what deterrent measures can the Baltic states employ?
If CCP vessels cannot be trusted to manoeuvre and operate safely in the Baltic, they must be required to take on a Pilot at the Denmark Straight who will command the vessel safely.
Now that there is a body of evidence that such vessels are not operating safely, the international maritime regulations must be applied just as they are in Suez, Panama and other difficult waterways.
Probably difficult to do that outside 12 mile limit.
CORRECTION
The Denmark Strait is the strait that separates Greenland from Iceland.
I meant the straits between Denmark and Sweden that enable entry from the Atlantic/North Sea to the Baltic Sea. These are within 12 miles from those countries so territorial waters in control of those countries (NATO members).
Alternatively this route can be blocked to RF shipping going to Kaliningrad or St Petersburg altogether.
#FAFO #VPGFO
There are countless breaks in cables in the Baltic annually. This is more likely coincidence.
Given that power and telecom cables are professionally operated there will be service incidents recorded for each and every outage, the opposite of “countless”.
The Rational Engineering approach has no coincidences there are always root causes for every incident.
Power cables are both heavily insulated for serviceability and safety reasons, and armoured for resilience. There are no natural phenomena in the Baltic Sea that can damage modern power cables. Only human intervention can do that.
At least one of those Chinese tankers had a Russian Captain.
As an ally of Russia, Chinese interference makes lots of sense. The thing is though that these are actions of war and the ships responsible need to be apprehended and held.
Chinese vessels all with Russian captains or Russians aboard.
One possible reason for this move is to put pressure on regional electrical supplies which ultimately affects power going into the Ukraine. Links neatly with the attacks on the generation and transmission infrastructure there.
“the Hong Kong-flagged container ship Xin Xin Tian 2 … a sister ship to the Newnew Polar Bear, a Chinese vessel that was involved in the damage of the Balticconnector gas pipeline in October 2023.” Why are these high risk vessels not tracked and escorted in international waters by the adjacent Navys with protection of critical infrastructure as the mission objective? Military vessels are routinely escorted and it must now be obvious that foreign powers are engaged in hybrid war making their vessels generally a risk. Not paying attention is like stopping QRA for aviation threats to allow the bad… Read more »
Because there are more civilian ships than naval ships?
NATO navies are not big enough to do that.
True, however all mitigation has to take a risk based priority approach as no resources are unlimited.
Escorts wouldn’t provide 100% coverage rather a strong message that RF cannot act without restrain and without consequences.
Not responding shows weakness.
could backfire on them.this is the kind of work that say an rammed version of Cetus could do in a group following up and down the cable route in a remote controlled Wolfpack.
Hmm…would that actually be the case if it was the collective, coordinated efforts of all relevant NATO air forces and navies in a combined op? In addition to possible placement of sailing masters in designated areas?
The real question is whether/when NATO will retaliate by conducting offensive grey zone activities, targeting the members of the scumbag alliance? Two sides can play this ‘game.’
The Finnish authorities have impounded the vessel eagle S and arrested the crew and forced them into Finnish national waters, not Xian Xian Tian 2.
Eagle S is Cook Island flagged, Xian Xian Tian 2 is Hong Kong flagged. Both ships are in international water and so only the flag country has the authority to board the ship or legal jurisdiction on it. Hong Kong is part of China, which has a huge navy but not Cook Island. China can do the same thing back to any Finnish vessels that pass through South China Sea but Cook Island cannot
No, the Estlink cables are in the 12 mile territorial waters of Finland and Estonia where national Coastguards have the right to board and inspect vessels. The international waters are further southwest beyond the 12 mile costal limit.
CORRECTION
Yes, that’s now corrected above.
almost certainly the ukraine again, just like when the actual evidence pointed to the ukrainian’s damaging the nord stream pipelines
Do you get paid extra roubles by the troll farm for posting on Boxing day?
Another kremlin stooge
Ukrainian nuclear sub I’ll bet😂
Gawd, Russia.propaganda is so contrived, extremely unconvincing and oh so dull, Ted. Try harder next term son.
Do you know John in mk ?
i never did figure out if the mk stood for Milton Keynes or Moskva
Did you get drunk on Vodka, fall and bang your head very hard ?
could backfire on them.this is the kind of work that say Pollock an rammed version of Cetus could do in a group following up and down the cable route in a remote controlled Wolfpack.
Simple. Arrest crews. Impound vessels. Investigate. Trial. Stuff “Law of the Sea”, UN or Chicom/Russian feelings. Do they bother about law or conventions?
I’m not sure if these are of any interest, but apparently, there are Chinese patents from 2012 and 2020 for undersea tools that fit any ship anchor. These two patents were going around and were of some interest to a situation like this. The information is from a podcast by two guys who used to live in China.
2020 China patent cn111203499 A
2012 China patent cn102358407 A
Maybe they should ban chinese flagged vessels from entering the Baltic Sea or if not that maybe put a ships pilot on board so the crew of any of these vessels don’t get any funny ideas
We need continuous drone surveillance of all ships around critical infrastructure in the Baltic and North Sea. AI processing of the collected date can easily identify all sabotage ships. Marine ships can then catch these hostile actors.
Innocent passage through a countries EEZ is allowed by international conventions, but passage where malicious intent or action is not. Saw some stupid comment regarding why would China get involved 🙄 If it were me, NATO and allied nations (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines). I would mine, patrol and escort national waters (I’d argue EEZ is warranted). See how they like those apples. Grey / asymmetric warfare doesn’t mean you cannot point the finger and negate (react). To do nothing enables such activity and is a sign of weakness which empowers said actors even more. Of course, this will not… Read more »
People seem to be forgettiing that the US and Nato have for years been using false flag incidents, regime change, sponsoring terrorist groups, war to expand their influence and political commercial agenda. Look no further that the group responsible for destroying the Russian German gas pipeline who have wrecked the German economy and made them reliant on US expensive gas imports. The Globalists and Military complex in the west is the route cause of conflicts in EU and MENA.
The little pinks are on now, the supreme leader must be concerned. I suggest you tell your bosses in Beijing that the only false flag operations are being conducted by the Russians and it appears they are trying to pull China into a conflict in the Baltic.
I think China may have successfully influenced me. I bought my niece a stuffed Winnie the Pooh for Christmas.
WTP has never been the same since the Milne Estate sold out to corporate Disney.
The 100 Acre Wood still stands strong for Freedom…
Things like this should make our government think about building so many underwater cables we should be focusing on being self sufficient in energy
These events should make all those sitting there wringing thier hands, should stand up and declare that our wire cutters are sharper than the bad man and If nothing else it ties up the bad man’s military and freeing those of the bad man. The bad man does not care and is clearly oblivious to our whining or what we think. Let’s take the same approach. It can only assist whilst we get all the Scandinavian ducks in a row and doing the same thing at the same time.