A Finnish court on Friday denied a request for the release of an oil tanker suspected by police of damaging an undersea power line and four telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea last week. Finland on Dec.

Finnish police said on Thursday they are investigating whether a foreign ship was involved in the damage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia following a sudden outage on Wednesday.

Finland says a ship affiliated with Russia's "shadow fleet" is linked to a 60-mile-long anchor drag mark on the seafloor. A power cable in the Baltic Sea was severed last week.

Finland's national power grid operator said on Thursday it had asked a Helsinki court to seize the Eagle S oil tanker in a bid to secure the company's claim for damages related to the breakdown of the undersea Estlink 2 electricity interconnector.

The Finnish authorities said the tanker might be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which emerged as a way to circumvent Western-imposed price caps on Russian oil transported by sea. The caps were introduced several months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The damaged cable is one of several recent incidents in the Baltic Sea under investigation as possible acts of sabotage.

Finnish police said on Sunday they had found tracks that drag on for dozens of kilometres along the bottom of the Baltic Sea where a tanker carrying Russian oil is suspected of breaking a power line and four telecoms cables with its anchor.

The Finnish transmission line operator, Fingrid, filed a request in a Helsinki court on Thursday to seize the tanker Eagle S to secure potential compensation claims. It is suspected that the vessel damaged the EstLink 2 subsea power link.