The cargo vessel Fitburg was seized and escorted to a small harbour in Kantvik, Kirkkonummi, Finland, 01 January 2026. The Fitsburg was suspected of being responsible for the damage of an underwater telecommunications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia. The vessel was intercepted within Finland's exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea. EPA/Jussi Eskola The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert after a string of underwater power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, with sabotage and shipping accidents blamed for the incidents.
Tuesday's outage on the Fenno-Skan 2 interconnector appeared to have been caused by a malfunction at a substation, while the undersea cable section appeared to be unharmed, Fingrid spokesperson Jonne Jappinen said.
Sweden's Svenska kraftnat also said the outage was caused by technical faults and that no police or any other law enforcement agencies were involved in the probe.
The outage on the 800 megawatt (MW) power line was expected to last for around 18 hours, according to a regulatory statement published by Svenska kraftnat on the Nord Pool messaging platform.
"Our assessment is that Fenno-Skan will be operational again shortly," the Swedish company said in a statement to Reuters.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Soren Jeppesen in Copenhagen and Essi Lehto in Helsinki, editing by Terje Solsvik and Louise Heavens)