Undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia hit by outage, prompting investigation

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - A power cable linking Finland and Estonia under the Baltic Sea suffered an outage, prompting an investigation, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Wednesday.

Writing on X, Orpo said that power transmission through the Estlink-2 cable stopped Wednesday and that authorities were "investigating the matter." He said the interruption would not affect electricity supplies in Finland.

Estonian network operator Elering said there was enough spare capacity to meet power needs on the Estonian side, public broadcaster ERR said on its website.

Authorities have been on edge about undersea infrastructure in the Baltic. Two data cables, one running between Finland and Germany, the other between Lithuania and Sweden, were severed in November.

Germany’s defense minister said officials had to assume the incident was "sabotage,” but without providing evidence or saying who might have been responsible. The remark came during a speech in which he discussed hybrid warfare threats from Russia.

The Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that once brought natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022. Authorities have termed it sabotage and launched criminal probes.

The Estlink-2 cable was down for much of this year to repair damage from a short circuit that may have been caused by the cable’s complex positioning, ERR reported.