Finland says it stopped oil tanker 12 minutes before it could cause more damage

• Finland says an oil tanker linked to Russia is set to wreak havoc on its undersea cables.
• Its president said authorities intervened about 12 minutes before the damage got worse.
• The tanker is accused of being part of a Russian “ghost fleet” sabotaging European infrastructure.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Tuesday his country arrested the crew of a Russia-linked oil tanker just minutes before it caused catastrophic damage to submarine cables in the Baltic Sea.

“If this had continued for another 12 minutes, the carnage would have been much worse than the four basic cables that were there,” Stubb told reporters at the Baltic-focused NATO summit in Helsinki this week.

The tanker, the Eagle S, was seized in late December as Finland investigated recent damage to its Estlink-2 power line, one of two vital cables carrying electricity across the Baltic Sea.

Four data cables were also cut.

Finnish investigators accused the Eagle S crew of trying to sabotage the cables by dragging the ship’s anchor for miles along the seabed.

The Finnish head of the investigation, Risto Lohi, told Reuters on Tuesday that the Eagle S would probably also have tried to sabotage the other power cable, the Estlink-1, if police had not boarded the ship.

“There would have been an almost immediate danger that other cables or pipes linked to our critical underwater infrastructure would have been damaged,” said Lohi, head of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation.

Stubb said Tuesday that the Finnish security process to protect the cables began under the supervision of a private company. If a cable is cut, the company will alert the authorities, who will then try to find any vessels in the vicinity of the disaster site.

“Once that happens, you identify the ship and contact it. Number four, you stop the ship,” Stubb said.

Stubb added that Finnish authorities would force the ship to enter Finnish waters, where officers could then legally board the ship.

This process is about to change now. European NATO members announced at the summit that they would launch a new program, called “Baltic Sentry,” to collectively patrol near infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

The surveillance program involves frigates, maritime aircraft and “a small fleet of naval drones,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said at the summit.

The Eagle S investigation is of particular importance to the European Union because it has been suspected for years that Russia is intentionally trying to covertly damage Western underwater infrastructure. Other cables, such as two fiber optic data cables connecting Finland and Germany, were cut last year.

Although the Eagle S is registered in the Cook Islands, European officials say it is linked to Russia because it was carrying 35,000 tons of unleaded gasoline loaded into Russian ports.

They accused the ship of being part of a Russian “ghost fleet,” or a network of ships whose owners are registered outside Russia and which are actually carrying sanctioned Russian oil.

Russia has denied any involvement in such sabotage. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside of normal business hours by Business Insider.