Finnish authorities announced on Wednesday that they had seized the vessel after it damaged a vital undersea communications cable running between the country and Estonia.
Finnish police said in a statement that the vessel suspected of causing the damage was found in Finnish territorial waters with its anchor chain lowered into the sea, and that the incident itself was in Estonian territorial waters.
Such incidents have become increasingly frequent in recent years, with suspicions that they are the result of sabotage, prompting NATO to launch a project earlier this year specifically aimed at strengthening the protection of critical undersea infrastructure.
Finnish police did not identify the vessel, but said Finnish authorities stopped the vessel, ordered it to raise anchor, and then took control of it.
The cable runs between Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but the incident was severe enough to cause an outage and was detected by Elisa, the Finnish telecommunications provider that operates the link.
Police announced that the incident is being investigated on suspicion of aggravated criminal damage, aggravated criminal attempt, and aggravated interference with communications.
