{"id":220009,"date":"2025-12-31T14:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/220009\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T14:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:34:07","slug":"finnish-police-seize-vessel-suspected-of-damaging-underwater-cable-finland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/220009\/","title":{"rendered":"Finnish police seize vessel suspected of damaging underwater cable | Finland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A ship suspected of damaging an underwater cable running between Helsinki and Tallinn has been seized by police.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Finnish officials say the vessel is suspected of being \u201cresponsible for the damage to the cable\u201d owned by the telecoms group Elisa and located in Estonia\u2019s exclusive economic zone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">No details about the identity of the vessel were disclosed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The cable was damaged in the Gulf of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/finland\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Finland<\/a>, part of the Baltic Sea bordered by Estonia, Finland and Russia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Elisa, which is based in Helsinki, detected a fault in its cable early on Wednesday and reported it to Finnish authorities, police said.<\/p>\n<p><a data-name=\"placeholder\" href=\"https:\/\/interactive.guim.co.uk\/uploader\/embed\/2025\/12\/gulf_of_finland_map\/giv-32554IFpfTz6ndls1\/\" class=\"dcr-1eupayo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Map<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">They said a border guard patrol vessel and helicopter located the suspect vessel with its anchor lowered into the sea. They ordered it to move and anchor in Finnish territorial waters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Finnish police said they were treating the incident as \u201caggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage and aggravated interference with telecommunications\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Officers have contacted national and international authorities, including those in Estonia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Energy and communications infrastructure, including underwater cables and pipelines, have been damaged repeatedly in the Baltic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many experts and political leaders have viewed the suspected cable sabotage as part of a \u201chybrid war\u201d carried out by Moscow against western countries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cFinland is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary,\u201d said Alexander Stubb, Finland\u2019s president, in a statement on X on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ship suspected of damaging an underwater cable running between Helsinki and Tallinn has been seized by police.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-220009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}