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BRUSSELS – Just past noon on Christmas Day, an oil tanker dragging its anchor along the Baltic seabed severed a 170-kilometer-long power cable known as Estlink-2, linking Finland and Estonia.
The incident, European officials said at the time, was just another example of Russia’s malevolent behaviour in the Baltic, where it has allegedly been engaged in a quiet war of provocation against NATO countries by using its so-called shadow fleet of tankers to clip data and power cables and its air force to violate NATO airspace.
Turns out that was only half of the story. While the Christmas episode fit into a familiar pattern of Russia trying to sabotage its Baltic neighbours, this time, it was likely motivated by more than a desire to annoy the West.
The timing of the Estlink attack, Finnish Green MEP Ville Niinistö said, “is unlikely to be a coincidence.”
Baltic synchronisation
That’s an understatement. To understand what Russia was really up to, one has to turn back the clock to the Soviet Union, when Moscow colonised the Baltic states and most of Eastern Europe.
One aspect of that subjugation was a policy known as “Baltic synchronisation,” which involved linking them to Russia’s power grid via Poland.
When the Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas Day in 1991 (which may explain the date of the Estlink severing), it left behind a ring of high-voltage cables connecting nuclear power plants in Leningrad to Belarus and the Baltics.
To this day, the grids of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia remain connected to Belarus and Russia – “an enduring connection to their occupation by the Soviet Union,” said Jason Moyer of the Washington-based Wilson Center, a think tank.
That era is due to draw to a close in early February, however, when the Baltics are set to liberate themselves from the Russian grid once and for all.
The Russian attack, which authorities believe was carried out by Eagle S, a 70,000-tonne oil tanker registered in the Cook Islands, was likely intended to scuttle that plan.
Moscow “is trying to show the Baltics are unprepared for the transition off the Soviet-era grid,” Moyer said.
At first, it looked like the Russian strategy might succeed as Estonia’s wholesale power prices spiked five-fold. But then the surge subsided.
More importantly, Finnish authorities were quick to seize the ship and arrest the 24-person crew. The Finns noted that the tanker had reduced speed before approaching the cables and had been dragging its anchor for 60 kilometres.
Finland’s quick action – it reached the ship before it could return to international waters – will likely be the decisive factor in determining what transpired on the tanker.
A quiet divorce
Despite their deep animosity towards Moscow, the Baltics have done little to advertise their pending divorce from Russia’s power grid.
For good reason: When Ukraine took a similar step in 2022, Russia launched its all-out invasion.
All told, the process of decoupling carries a price tag of about €1.6 billion, 75% of which will be covered by the EU.
Yet the cost of the undertaking is the least of the EU’s worries.
“Decisions to synchronise and desynchronise are shaped by both geopolitical and geo-economic relations – and shape those relations going forward,” said Georg Zachmann, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels think tank.
Despite the Christmas surprise, the process of taking the Baltic off Russia’s grid is proceeding as planned, local officials said. The undersea cable that was damaged is one of only four connecting the Baltics to the rest of the EU.
“Synchronisation will take place as planned at the beginning of February,” Latvian grid operator AST told Euractiv.
The ‘island test’
The destroyed cable has spooked the region, forcing officials to consider skipping a key step in the de-linking process.
Before connecting to the European grid, the Baltic countries would normally test their grid in isolation in what is known as an “island test.” This step, meant to ensure that everything is functioning according to plan, will likely be left out, said Susanne Nies, an expert with Berlin-based think-tank Helmholtz Zentrum.
“The Baltics associate a certain risk with the test,” Nies said. “When Ukraine undertook it in 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion.”
Currently, the grid operators in these countries are “considering the option to organise the isolated operating test at another time post synchronisation,” Latvia’s AST said in a statement last week.
Party’s over
Though Russians haven’t succeeded in derailing the Baltic’s decoupling, they have rained on their parade.
When the synchronisation was 100 days away, Baltic energy ministers met in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to launch a monument counting down, standing in front of the technology museum.
The final days will proceed in a decidedly more subdued fashion. “They won’t be celebrating this major achievement with a state ceremony,” says Nies, adding that the Baltics and Poland “are trying to keep the significance of the synchronisation quiet.”
Disinformation and more
Baltic politicians themselves are showing some nerves in the lead-up to the switch being flipped.
“In complex geopolitical conditions, it is true that society is more vulnerable, and as the set date for the conclusion of the synchronisation project comes closer, the more we encounter misleading information,” said Latvia’s Climate and Energy Minister Kaspars Melnis in a statement last week.
Energy policy has frequently been a vector for Russian propaganda campaigns seeking to foment dissent. A mid-2024 report by monitoring firm Mediaskopas found that disinformation on the grid divorce has been “consistently pushed” in Russian media since 2021.
Nies expects “Russia to flood the Baltics with another propaganda wave” in the run-up to the February divorce.
So far, the Latvian government is just preaching caution. “We urge the public to treat information critically, not to fall foul of any emotionally charged pronouncements, and not share news that has not been verified,” Melnis said.
Where to pin the blame
Disinformation, like the sabotage of pipelines and cables, is considered a ‘hybrid attack’. The goal? To destabilise societies without the use of force.
Such acts are difficult to definitively attribute to a state culprit, and Western governments have few options to punish the likely perpetrators.
Should they consider sabotage as harmful as a military attack, they could invoke NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence clause – or a similar EU clause.
Few in security circles expect that to happen anytime soon, however. Russia, after all, has scores of nuclear missiles pointed at Europe.
Russia knows this, of course, which encourages Moscow to continue with its subterfuge.
That may explain why the number of households generating their own electricity in the region is surging.
[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Owen Morgan/mk]
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