An anchor-like object was found at the site where the Balticconnector was damaged

An object resembling an anchor was found at the site where the Balticconnector gas pipeline was damaged. The version of Russian involvement in the incident at the facility is not considered a priority, Finnish law enforcement spokesman Risto Lohi told reporters.

“This morning we removed a foreign object from the incident site. He looks like an anchor <...> The Russian ship is not being considered as the main focus of the investigation,” he said (quote according to TASS).

As Iltalehti notes, the anchor weighs about 6 tons, and part of it is missing. Thus, the priority version is damage to the gas pipeline by a moving ship, he emphasized.

On the afternoon of October 8, Finnish Gasgrid reported a drop in pressure in the Balticconnector at night. According to the company, the cause could be a leak. The Finnish government later admitted that this may have been due to a deliberate act. On October 11, the Finnish government’s Foreign and Security Policy Committee reported that the damage could have been caused by “external activities.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the incident on October 13, calling statements that Moscow was involved in the gas pipeline incident “bullshit.” The head of state noted that he did not even know about the existence of such a gas pipeline.

On October 17, the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti reported that Finnish police were interested in the Russian container ship and focused on its activities. Previously, Swedish Minister of Civil Defense Karl-Oskar Bohlin statedthat the damage to the telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Estonia is associated with damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline and the cable between Estonia and Finland. The minister did not specify what exactly connects the damage to the two cables and the Balticconnector.