Lithuanian president calls for increased vigilance over suspicious vessels in Baltic Sea

Lithuania's President Gitanas Nausėda has said that there is a need to monitor vessels that raise suspicion in the Baltic Sea.

“If such ships approach infrastructure, measures should be taken to prevent potential incidents,” Nausėda said during an interview on TV3, Caliber.Az reports via Russian media.

"Knowing in advance that a vessel from a particular company is operating in the Baltic, moving between ports, we must allocate the necessary technical resources to track its movements," he added.

On December 26, the Finnish Border Guard detained the Eagle S oil tanker, which had departed from Saint Petersburg, in the Baltic Sea. The vessel is suspected of being involved in the damage to the Estlink 2 underwater power cable, which connects Finland to Estonia.

This is not the first incident. In November, the C-Lion1 and Arelion communication cables in the Baltic, and the year before, the Balticconnector gas pipeline, running along the floor of the Gulf of Finland, were damaged. The repair of the cable has been estimated at over 30 million euros ($31 million), with restoration work expected to take around seven months to complete.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna expressed doubt that these frequent damages could be purely coincidental, linking the incidents to Russia's shadow fleet. The EU has already pledged to impose new sanctions on Russia following the latest event in the Baltic.

By Naila Huseynova