Helsinki: Finnish authorities have boarded an oil tanker in the Baltic Sea as part of an investigation into the outage of a subsea electricity cable between Finland and Estonia.

Police in Helsinki said on Thursday that the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S tanker was stopped by maritime authorities and that they had taken control of the vessel.

The operation came a day after the EstLink2 power cable was knocked offline. Other communication cables in the same waters were also damaged. Finnish President Alexander Stubb suggested the freighter is part of Russia’s shadow fleet - that is, ships that Russia use unofficially to circumvent sanctions. (DPA)