Finnish police on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of damaging a telecommunications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia.

The cargo vessel called Fitburg was spotted with its anchor lowered near the site in Estonia's exclusive economic zone where telecom provider Elisa detected a fault early Wednesday.

A Finnish border guard vessel and helicopter located the ship and ordered it to stop, raise its anchor, and move into Finnish territorial waters.

"Finland is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary," President Alexander Stubb wrote on X.

Undersea 'sabotage' has countries ‍on high alert

Finnish police said they were investigating the incident as "aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage, and aggravated interference with telecommunications."

The Fitburg sailed under the flag of St Vincent and Grenadine and had departed from St Petersburg in Russia and was headed to Haifa in Israel, according to MarineTraffic data.

There were 14 crewmembers aboard the ship, who were taken into custody according to the police. 

Estonia's Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said Finnish and Estonian authorities were in "close cooperation and actively exchanging information."

There have been a series of outages affecting power cables, telecom links, and gas pipelines connecting Nordic, Baltic, and other European countries since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Experts and political leaders have viewed the suspected cable sabotage as part of a "hybrid war" carried out by Russia against Western countries.

NATO stepped up patrols in the Baltic Sea earlier this year due to the number of incidents.

Edited by: Sean Sinico