Cable damaged on Christmas by Russian shadow fleet ship restored in Baltic Sea
The Estlink 2 power cable, laid in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia, resumed operation on Friday, June 20, six months after it was damaged by a Russian shadow fleet vessel, Finnish broadcaster Yle reported.
Repairs to Estlink 2 began in May, and the work was completed on June 18, earlier than planned.
According to reports from national grid operators Fingrid and Elering, the damaged submarine cable has been replaced over a section of approximately one kilometer.
The vessel Deep Cygnus was used to repair the EstLink 2 cable, on which special equipment was installed.
The Cook Islands-flagged oil tanker Eagle S, which is part of Russia's shadow fleet, is suspected of damaging the Finnish-Estonian power line Estlink 2.
Finnish police detained the vessel in late December 2024. The Finnish transport and communications agency Traficom declared the Eagle S unseaworthy after on-board inspections.
In January, the Helsinki District Court arrested Eagle S indefinitely in a civil case seeking damages from the companies that own the Estlink 2 cable, as well as Finland's Elisa, which owns two telecommunications cables.
- Finland and Estonia are connected by two submarine power cables: EstLink 2 with a capacity of 658 MW and EstLink 1, which has almost half the capacity.
- EstLink 2 consists of converter stations in Estonia and Finland and a cable over 170 km long, of which about 12 km are laid underground in Estonia, about 147 km along the bottom of the Gulf of Finland and about 14 km overland in Finland as an aerial cable.
- After the previous failure of EstLink 2 in January 2024, it was repaired for almost nine months.