Helsinki, 14 January 2025 (dpa/MIA) - Baltic Sea NATO member countries plan to discuss security in the region at a summit in Helsinki on Tuesday that comes in the wake of a number of recent acts of suspected sabotage at sea.

The main purpose of the summit is to find ways to better protect critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea and to counter the threat posed by the so-called Russian shadow fleet.

This refers to ships that Russia uses to transport oil, for example, in order to circumvent sanctions imposed as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.

The meeting is being hosted by Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. The leaders of NATO countries in the Baltic Sea region are also expected to take part, including Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is travelling from Brussels, while the European Commission is represented by Vice President Henna Virkkunen. Russia, the only Baltic Sea country outside NATO, is not involved.

The summit is the participating NATO countries' response to recent incidents in which several cables in the Baltic Sea were allegedly intentionally cut.

In two of these cases, the cables were fibre-optic cables running between Helsinki and the northern German city of Rostock.

In the most recent of these incidents, in which an electricity cable between Finland and Estonia was also damaged, the oil tanker Eagle S is suspected of having caused the damage with its anchor. The ship was flying the flag of the Cook Islands, but according to the EU it belongs to the Russian shadow fleet.

Photo: MIA archive