As tensions rise in the Baltic Sea, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen announced on Friday that NATO is sending two ships to “monitor critical underwater infrastructure and the Russian shadow fleet“. On Sunday, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said his country would send three vessels and an airplane to take part in the Baltic Sea operation. On 25 December, the ‘Estlink 2‘ power cable and four telecommunications cables connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged: the Finnish police seized the tanker ‘Eagle S‘, believed to be part of the Russian ‘shadow fleet’. Investigators suspect that the cables were damaged by the tanker’s anchor. There have been similar incidents in recent weeks that have been interpreted as Russian ‘hybrid warfare’ actions. The British-led ‘Joint Expeditionary Force’ (JEF), which includes Nordic and Baltic states, announced increased surveillance of submarine infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. The President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, and the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kristen Michal, will host a summit of NATO‘s Baltic Sea neighbours in Helsinki next week to discuss security in the region. Also attending will be NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen and the leaders of Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also blames Russia for the Eventin oil tanker drifting in the Baltic Sea. “Russia is endangering our European security not only with its war of aggression against Ukraine, […] but also with broken cables, moved border buoys, disinformation campaigns, GPS jammers and even […] with the dastardly deployment of a fleet of rusting oil tankers, […]” she said, adding that “those who turn a blind eye to this threat are just as negligent as those who presented Nord Stream 2 as a purely economic project at the time“.
