The Estlink 2 power cable running along the Baltic Sea floor has been severed, its operator reported. The connection failure occurred around noon on Wednesday. The cable connects Finland with Estonia.
Arto Pahkin, a representative of the company, told Finnish public broadcaster Yle that the cause of the failure is unknown, but he did not rule out sabotage. He also noted that there have been previous technical malfunctions of the cable.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo assured on the platform X that Finnish authorities are investigating the incident. He added that the disruption has not caused issues with the country’s power supply. EstLink 2 is the second power connection between Finland and Estonia. The total length of the Finland-Estonia connection is 170 km, of which 145 km runs under the Gulf of Finland. The link was out of operation due to a short circuit from January to September of this year.
This is yet another incident in the Baltic region. At the beginning of December, two cables connecting Finland and Sweden were severed in Espoo and Vihti. The first reports emerged on the evening of December 2. Finnish cable operator Global Connect confirmed a service disruption but announced the next day that the repair team had restored the first broken connections. Lulu Ranne, Finland’s Minister of Transport and Communications, told Politico that authorities are investigating and „treating the situation seriously.”
Later, it was revealed that human error was the cause of the failure. Concerns over cable disruptions between Finland and Sweden are understandable, especially since just two weeks earlier, telecommunications cables running through the Baltic Sea were damaged. These incidents occurred on November 17 and 18, affecting infrastructure connecting Sweden with Lithuania and Finland with Germany.
