Finland plans to set up a new maritime surveillance center in the Gulf of Finland to safeguard critical undersea infrastructure in response to increasing regional tensions.
The initiative, announced by Finland’s Border Guard, will involve cooperation with other Baltic Sea states and the European Commission, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
This development comes as the Baltic Sea region remains on high alert following a series of incidents involving power cables, telecommunications links, and gas pipelines since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The most recent event occurred on New Year’s Eve, when Finnish authorities intercepted a cargo vessel en route from Russia to Israel on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea telecoms cable.
While NATO has increased its military presence in the area with frigates, aircraft, and naval drones, the Finnish surveillance centre is part of a broader joint action plan. This plan, proposed by the European Commission in February last year, seeks to enhance the overall security of submarine cables across the region.
“We are developing, and we have the need for, broader preventive measures, even before any harm has occurred,” Mikko Hirvi, Head of Maritime Safety and Security at the Finnish Border Guard, told Reuters.
The preventive measures include sensors in the seabed, artificial intelligence solutions for enhanced and real-time analysis of maritime traffic and exchanging information on vessels with allies, he added, declining to comment on which capabilities were already operational.
Hirvi said the surveillance centre would be built gradually, drawing on the Border Guard’s existing capabilities, and that Finland planned also to seek EU funding for it.
