The West Found A Miles-long Piece Of Evidence Backing Its Claim Russia Is Purposely Cutting Undersea Cables

Officers of the Finnish coast guard near the oil tanker Eagle S in December.Jussi Nukari / Lehtikuva / AFPFinland accused a Russian ship of dragging its anchor to sever undersea cables in the Baltic.Officials said the vessel, Eagle S, is part of a "shadow fleet" transporting sanctioned oil. The EU believes Russia is responsible for incidents that have disrupted power and internet service.Western nations have long suspected that Russia has been deliberately severing vital underseas cables — but without much to prove it.That may have changed after officials in Finland pointed to an unusually vivid piece of evidence tied to a Russia-linked ship.Finnish officials on Sunday said they found miles and miles of tracks on the bed of the Baltic Sea that indicate a Russia-linked tanker could be responsible for slicing a cluster of valuable data and power cables.Sami Paila, the detective chief inspector of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation, said "dragging marks" from an aging tanker's anchor had been found beneath the Baltic Sea near the cables, Reuters reported."The track is dozens of kilometers in length," Paila said.Germany's foreign minister on Friday cited the incident as a "wake-up call," saying it would be naive to consider it an accident.The minister, Annalena Baerbock, pushed for further European sanctions on the so-called "shadow fleet" of ships tied to Russia.Finnish officials boarded the Eagle S after the Estlink 2 subsea cable carrying electricity and four other cables carrying data were damaged on Wednesday.Estlink 2 is one of two cables carrying electricity between Finland and Estonia.