"The hi-tech equipment on board was abnormal for a merchant ship and consumed more power from the ship's generator, leading to repeated blackouts," a source familiar with the vessel told the publication.

The source said listening and recording equipment was brought on to the tanker in "huge portable suitcases" along with "many laptops" that had keyboards for Turkish and Russian languages when calling at Türkiye and Russia, it wrote.

"They were monitoring all Nato naval ships and aircraft," Lloyd's List was told. 

The Finnish Border Guard detained the aging vessel, connected to Russia's sanction-evading shadow fleet, on December 26 and brought it into Finnish waters.

On Saturday morning, the police moved the tanker to a port to carrying out investigative measures.

The vessel is suspected to have broken the EstLink 2 electricity cable that runs through the Gulf of Finland connecting Estonia and Finland. Four data cables were damaged at around the same time.

The ship's crew was made up of Georgian and Indian citizens, the National Criminal Police said.

On Friday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said it is too early to conclude if the cable damage could be attributed to Russian hybrid interference. He told the media there has not been any diplomatic reaction from Russia yet.

NATO has agreed to increase its presence in the Baltic Sea following the incident, the latest in a string of cables and pipelines broken by ships with connections to Russia and China in the region.

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