According to information from the maritime traffic monitoring service Marinetraffic, the tanker Eagle S had noticeably slowed its speed at the time the cable damage was identified.

Based on monitoring data, a border guard patrol vessel directed the tanker away from the area near the Porkkala Peninsula early in the evening on Christmas Day. By early Thursday morning, both vessels were still in the vicinity of Porkkala.

According to Marinetraffic, the oil tanker was en route from St. Petersburg to Egypt. The British maritime publication Lloyd's List, which covers maritime traffic, reports that the Eagle S is part of Russia's "shadow fleet."

The publication defines the shadow fleet as consisting of vessels over 15 years old whose true owners are unknown and whose sole purpose is transporting oil from sanctioned countries.

Helsingin Sanomat: Problems with Frankfurt-Helsinki cable

The German data center operator Hetzner also reported early Thursday that there were issues with the network connection between Germany and Finland, Helsingin Sanomat wrote on Thursday.

"There is currently a fault in the main network connection between Frankfurt and Helsinki. This may cause short-term latency issues. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding," the company stated in a press release.

No additional details have been provided about the fault, nor is there any information on whether it is related to the disruption in the power grid between Finland and Estonia.

It is highly likely that part of the cable is located in the Gulf of Finland.

At 12:26 p.m. on Wednesday, the Estlink 2 direct current connection between Estonia and Finland was shut down due to an emergency. The cause of the outage is currently unknown, Elering reported. Estonia and Finland's system operators, Elering and Fingrid, are actively working to identify the cause of the fault as quickly as possible.

Social media observers have been keeping an eye on two ships

Yle.fi reported that the movements of the tanker Eagle S have also been deemed suspicious on social media.

Public data observer Auonsson noted that the oil tanker Eagle S reduced its speed to a quarter of its usual pace just minutes before crossing the Estlink 2 cable. According to information shared on social media, the vessel was crossing the cable at the time the fault occurred.

The cargo ship Xin Xin Tian 2, sailing under the Hong Kong flag and identified on Wednesday as being in the vicinity of the cable fault, reportedly crossed the cable's location eight minutes before the fault occurred.

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