First of all, how do we know who is sailing our seas? This is monitored by both civil and military authorities. The vessel traffic management department of the Transport Administration is located in Tallinn, on the outskirts of Lasnamäe, its area of responsibility stretches from the Kõpu peninsula on the island of Hiiumaa to the Bay of Narva, and its main task is the safety of navigation.

In the Estonian area of responsibility, there is an average of 50 ships per day, of which about half are moving and the rest are anchored. The main information on the position of ships comes from the Automatic Identification System (AIS). This is public information that anyone can view on online platforms such as Marine Traffic. Although AIS is mandatory for civilian vessels, it can still be turned off and, in theory, even faked.

Commodore Jüri Saska said that the joint maritime operations center of the Navy and the Police and Border Guard Agency (PPA), located in Tallinn, has at least a 100 percent picture of the traffic on the water. The exact capabilities are a mystery, but thanks to radar and sonar, even those who do not want to identify themselves can be seen, and thanks to allies, the area of awareness is much wider. In addition, three naval vessels patrol the sea around the clock.

"From a military point of view, we are still very clearly engaged in making clear to almost every ship who is who and what is what. So we're really tracking everybody that's moving, from the casual yachts to the supertankers," Navy Commander Saksa said.

The Maritime Administration and the Navy confirm that the Hong Kong-flagged Newnew Polar Bear, owned by a Chinese company, entered Estonian waters at 5:18 p.m. on October 7, when one of the strongest tidal storms of the season was breaking trees and blowing off roofs on land, but the 169-meter container ship was visibly unaffected. The ship reported to the control center as usual, and everything seemed normal.

"It was reported to us when the vessel entered our area of responsibility from the west, and all relevant information was relayed. We have not been in communication with the ship since then," said the director of the maritime safety service of the Transport Administration. Saska said that there was no particular reason to pay special attention to the ship.

But even without the dramatic events that followed, the voyage of the cargo ship was remarkable. In fact, it was the first round-trip voyage of a cargo ship on the route linking the European part of Russia with China via the Arctic Sea Route.

Alexander Lott, a researcher at the Norwegian Center for the Law of the Sea, and Michael Delaunay, an undersea infrastructures expert at the French Maritime Academy, both said that, on the one hand, climate change has made the Northern Sea Route (NSR) easier to navigate, and on the other, Russia requires new trade links with Asia in light of the sanctions imposed as a result of the Ukraine war.

That is why the launch of the Newnew Polar Bear from St Petersburg in the summer and return in the autumn was widely covered by nautical portals. There has been conjecture as to whether the Chinese or Russians are behind his company's complicated ownership structure, but researchers believe it doesn't matter because everything is already under Russian control. The New New Polar Bear was granted permission to sail the Northern Sea Route by Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom, and it was accompanied in the Arctic by the 260-metre nuclear-powered icebreaker Sevmorput, which is also owned by Rosatom.

The ships that had made the long journey arrived in the Gulf of Finland about midnight on October 7, more or less together, moving in the EEZ, or outside territorial seas. Sevmorput, a Russian nuclear-powered cargo ship, arrived first at 1:12 a.m., followed by the Newnew Polar Bear around eight minutes later, and the gas pipeline saw a rapid reduction in pressure.

Tiit Toomits, the head of maintenance for the Elering offshore pipeline, which manages the route on the Estonian side of the line, said that measurements revealed that the damage was most likely in the sea at a depth of about 60 meters, and he immediately suspected a ship. "How can a physical injury occur at such depths at sea, it is a ship, an anchor? It was quite stormy that evening, so was there a ship in trouble, a technical failure, negligence?" Toomits recalled his initial reaction.

Although the suspected Russian and Chinese ships were promptly identified, they made no visible appearance, and the location of the damage was hampered by a storm at sea. It wasn't until two days later that a Finnish naval robot discovered a rupture in the gas pipe. It also turned out that a communication line connecting Estonia and Finland was not working properly. The disturbing episode received international attention, with world leaders including NATO Secretary General speaking out.

Several assessments show that Russian or Chinese-affiliated vessels frequently loiter near maritime patrols with their transponders switched off. In recent years, the frequency of breaches of various connections has increased, ranging from the repeated bursting of submarine cables connecting the Norwegian mainland to the Svalbard archipelago, to the Nord Stream explosion. In several cases, fish trawlers have been identified as offenders, but the exact cause is often unknown. Furthermore, an Estonian marine scientist was convicted of collaborating with Chinese intelligence a few years ago, and a Russian professor at the University of Tartu, who occasionally worked in Norway and on Arctic issues, was recently accused of identical charges.

"Russia has spent years studying Western Europe's crucial marine infrastructure in the North Sea, the Baltic, and elsewhere. This has frequently been accomplished precisely using so-called Russian research vessels. And, generally, these research vessels have had these AIS systems turned off," Lott said.

Both the transport authority and the navy admit that "ghost ships," as they are referred to in the press, operate in the Gulf of Finland, but they caution against over-emphasizing the situation.

"There's no doubt that it's been an eye-opener for a lot of people in terms of the capabilities of the opposing team, what they're doing and how they're using one or the other. But whether this or that incident here in the region can be directly attributed to them, that is still for the investigators to find out," Saksa said.

Prosecutor Triinu Olev said that this issue was also on the table, but for now the main version of the investigation is still that the Chinese ship may have been involved in these incidents.

The Chinese ship was immediately identified, thanks in part to photographs taken in St. Petersburg harbor the day after the event, which showed the ship's anchor missing. Additional photographs later verified this. However, on October 11, while the seabed was still being searched for damage, the cargo ship quickly sailed away.

Rein Raudsalu, a lecturer at the Maritime Academy, said, "This is quite interesting, because losing an anchor is a maritime accident and no ship is allowed to leave port without two anchors. This tends to suggest that the Russian maritime administration is also involved."

It was impossible to stop the ship beyond Finnish and Estonian waters. After the ship crossed Norway, it was discovered that the Estonian-Swedish communication cable north of Hiiumaa had also been damaged. A week later, the Finnish navy recovered the ship's damaged anchor from the seabed east of the Balticconnector. The Chinese ship may have damaged the Estonian EEZ communication cables and a Finnish economic water gas pipeline. The probe has been split between the two countries, which have asked China for access to the vessel and crew.

Prosecutor Olev said it's too early to predict their response. Many scientists and experts argue that what happened is unreasonable from a maritime perspective. Rein Raudsalu has 60 years of seafaring experience, mostly as a captain. At the request of the ERR, a lecturer at the Taltech Maritime Academy conducted an independent analysis. French Maritime Academy lecturer Hervé Baudu ran a computer simulation of the incident and his colleague Michael Delaunay explained it to the ERR.

According to experts, many things do not add up. First, an anchor has to be secured in at least three ways at sea. Second, even if all the brakes were broken or not applied, releasing a chain of that length would create a loud noise and vibration. "A six- or eight-ton anchor would fall 100 or 70 meters down, dragging an anchor chain behind it, each meter of which must weigh somewhere over 100 kilograms. /.../ It's inconceivable that no one on board felt it or knew about it!" Raudsalu said.

Both Raudsalu's evaluation and the French simulation show that if the anchor reaches the bottom of the ship at this speed, the anchor chain should break. Even if, by some miracle, it remains intact, the dragging obstacle behind it will begin to severely reduce speed and affect the course.

Everyone admits that accidents happen at sea, especially in a storm, but in this case, there are more than 180 kilometers between the places of damage, which must have taken almost nine hours to travel. "How can you miss an anchor dragging behind you in five-meter waves, the anchor itself weighing several tons, and not hear this? It's impossible."

The underwater gas pipelines, including the Balticconnector, are made of special steel, coated with plastic and then encased in concrete to reduce the risk of damage, but the pipe was lifted out of place and torn like paper. Although some sources have claimed that the ship slowed for a moment just before passing the Balticconnector, the material available to the ERR does not show this.

The ERR requested that a decrypted Vessel Traffic Control screen recording from that evening be released. This is the exact visual that the operators saw. The recording has been sped up for clarity, but it shows the Hong Kong and Russian ships going more or less simultaneously. The cargo ship leads, followed by the icebreaker, which crosses the Balticconnector. The Newnew Polar Bear maintained a steady speed of 11 knots, or 20 kilometers per hour, but if you look attentively, directly over the Balticconnector, around 1:21 a.m., the speed plummeted to 6 knots, or roughly half.

It is important to point out that all public evaluations of vessel positions to date have relied on AIS data, which might theoretically be manipulated.

The answers to these questions must come from the investigation. The entire background is so suspicious, and the chain of events is so complex, that the researchers cannot rule out sabotage. But what could have been the motive?

Delaunay, who specializes in underwater infrastructure at the French Maritime Academy, believes there could be two causes. First, technically test how to destroy the cables. "The ability to sever connections is very important if you are planning or want to prepare for a possible war." As a second motivation, he mentioned sending a message to NATO countries in the region.

"Are we really prepared that on the eve of war, some cargo ship with a Russian special unit, which is trained for such operations, will target not two submarine cables, but all five?" Lott asked.

There are many loose ends in this story, from the fact that no one knows who was on board the Newnew Polar Bear that night to the fact that it appears that the thousand-kilometer communications line connecting St Petersburg and Kaliningrad failed at the same time.

By the time solutions to this riddle are sought, several broader conclusions have already been drawn, ranging from considering a legal change that would allow Estonian authorities to intercept suspicious vessels in our exclusive economic zone, to simply increasing maritime patrols.

In recent days, both the Norwegian and Estonian foreign intelligence agencies released their yearly assessments, with an emphasis on Russia and China, as well as the risks of infrastructure strikes. ERR also reached out to the Chinese Embassy and the Newnew Polar Bear shipping company for comment but received no response.

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