A Cook Islands-flagged tanker, captained by a Georgian, has been detained in connection with damage to the Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia in the Baltic Sea. The Eagle S is suspected to be part of Russia's so-called shadow fleet.
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The power cable was damaged on Christmas Day, December 25. On December 26, police detained the tanker Eagle S in Finnish territorial waters, stating that more than 20 people were on board, all of whom were citizens of Georgia and India.
“We are investigating a serious act of sabotage. According to our information, the damage was caused by the ship’s hull, which is currently under investigation,” said Robin Lardot, director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation.
The Finnish publication Yle reports that a long, several-kilometre-long track left by the hull has been found on the seabed. A police representative told Yle that, as a result of investigative activities conducted on the seabed, they now have an initial understanding of the incident, and that the track found belongs to the Eagle S’s hull. Investigative work has been suspended for now due to strong winds.
The Russian investigative project Important Stories that the Eagle S departed the Russian port of Ust-Luga in the Baltic Sea at 3:25 a.m. local time on December 25, heading for the port of Aliaga in western Turkey. According to MarineTraffic, the destination was Port Said in Egypt.
The investigative project identified the Eagle S’s captain as Georgian citizen Davit Vadachkoria, who boarded the ship on October 15. On December 14, another crew member with a Georgian surname, Mirza Zhozhadze, joined the tanker in Ust-Luga. Their details are included in the health declaration that the sailors fill out.
Important History writes, citing port data, that the Eagle S left the Indian port of Kandla and stopped at the Danish port of Skagen on October 15, before arriving in Ust-Luga on October 26. The tanker stayed in Ust-Luga for almost two months and sailed to St. Petersburg on December 20. It returned to Ust-Luga on December 23 and left the Russian port 13 hours later.
The tanker is owned by the United Arab Emirates-based company Caravella LLC and was registered in the Cook Islands on July 26, 2023.
A Finnish customs official stated that the tanker likely belongs to Russia’s shadow fleet, which is exporting oil from Russia in violation of Western sanctions. According to Finnish authorities, the Eagle S was carrying unleaded gasoline taken from a Russian port.
The 650-megawatt, 170-kilometer cable damaged in the Baltic Sea will take about seven months to repair.
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaia Kalas, has blamed Russia for the incident. In an interview with WELT, Kalas stated that the sabotage attempts in Europe in recent months are not isolated incidents but part of a coordinated system of actions aimed at destabilizing EU infrastructure. Kalas called for measures against Russia.
