Finland was 12 minutes away from stopping an oil tanker linked to Russia after suffering 'serious' damage to undersea cables, the president said.

• Finland has said an oil tanker linked to Russia has come close to causing damage to its submarine cables.

• Its president said officials intervened about 12 minutes before the damage “became too bad.”

• The tanker is suspected of being part of Russia's “shadow fleet” which is destroying European infrastructure.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday that his country had suspended the crew of a Russian-linked oil tanker minutes before it caused major damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.

“If it had gone on for another 12 minutes, the carnage would have been worse than the four cables that were there,” Stubb told reporters at a NATO-focused Baltic summit in Helsinki.

The tanker, the Eagle S, was seized in late December as Finland investigated the latest damage to its Estlink-2 power line, one of two important power lines in the Baltic Sea.

Four data cables were also disconnected.

Finnish investigators have accused the Eagle S crew of trying to destroy the cables by dragging the ship's anchor several kilometers out to sea.

Finland's head of investigations, Risto Lohi, told Reuters on Tuesday that the Eagle S might have tried to destroy another power line, Estlink-1, if police had not boarded the ship.

“There would have been a risk almost immediately that some of the cables or pipes related to our important underwater infrastructure would have been damaged,” said Lohi, the head of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation.

On Tuesday, Stubb said Finland's security process to protect the cables had begun with a private company looking into them. If the cable is cut, the company will notify the authorities, who will then try to find possible vessels in the area of ​​damage.

“Once that happens, you target the ship and touch the ship. Number four, you stop the ship,” Stubb said.

Stubb added that Finnish authorities will force the ship into Finnish waters, where officials can legally enter the ship.

That process will now change. The European members of NATO announced at the conference that they will launch a new system, called “Baltic Sentry,” for joint patrolling around the infrastructure of the Baltic Sea.

The surveillance system includes frigates, seaplanes, and “an array of seaplanes,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said at the conference.

The investigation into the S-Eagle is of particular importance to the European Union because it has been suspected for years that Russia was deliberately trying to damage Western infrastructure under the sea. Other lines, such as two fiber-optic data lines running between Finland and Germany, were cut last year.

Although the Eagle S is registered in the Cook Islands, European officials say it has been detained in Russia because it was carrying 35,000 tons of unleaded fuel that had been loaded at Russian ports.

They accused the ship of being part of Russia's “shadow fleet,” or a network of vessels with owners registered outside of Russia that actually carry licensed Russian oil.

Russia has denied any involvement in such sabotage. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

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