NATO member states in the Baltic Sea plan to discuss security in the region at a summit in Helsinki on Tuesday, which follows a number of recent acts of suspected sabotage at sea.
The main goal of the summit is to find ways to better protect critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea and counter the threat of the so-called Russian shadow fleet.
This concerns ships that Russia uses, for example, to transport oil to circumvent the sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine.
The meeting is organized 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 participate, including Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte travels 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 response of the participating NATO countries to recent incidents in which several cables in the Baltic Sea were allegedly deliberately cut.
Two of these cases involved fiber optic cables between Helsinki and the northern German city of Rostock.
In the most recent of these incidents, which also damaged an electricity cable between Finland and Estonia, the oil tanker Eagle S is suspected of causing the damage with its anchor. The ship flew the flag of the Cook Islands, but according to the EU it belongs to the Russian shadow fleet.