Finland hopes to prevent damage to undersea infrastructure by establishing a new maritime surveillance mechanism, a border guard official told AFP Monday.
It will be set up in cooperation with other Baltic Sea states and is part of the EU Commission’s plan to boost the security of submarine cables.
Mikko Hirvi, head of maritime safety at the Finnish Border Guard, said that it will include hubs around the region that would “exchange information, risk analyses, threat assessments, and real-time information”.
“This also involves the development of surveillance capabilities, including sensors, related technology and exercises,” he added.
Instead of building new facilities, information would be sent to existing “border guard structures”, he said.
Efforts to improve surveillance of undersea infrastructure have increased due to several incidents often involving vessels from Russia’s “shadow fleet” suspected of damaging cables in the Baltic Sea.
Russia has reportedly built up a flotilla of old oil tankers of opaque ownership to get around sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and the G7 group of nations over Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine that started in 2022.
On New Year’s Eve, Finland seized a cargo ship carrying Russian steel that was suspected of damaging a telecommunications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn.
Hirvi said they should be prepared for similar incidents in the future given the “unusually large amount of damage to critical subsea infrastructure” in recent years.
The number of shadow fleet vessels navigating the Baltic Sea has not declined, Hirvi said.
“We are talking about an average of 45 ships per week… and a large part of them belong to the shadow fleet” moving through the Gulf of Finland and “loaded with Russian oil” he said.
Many experts and political leaders have viewed the suspected cable sabotage as part of a “hybrid war” carried out by Russia against Western countries.
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