A Helsinki court on Friday dismissed a case against three members of a ship from Russia's "shadow fleet" suspected of cutting Baltic Sea cables, saying it was beyond its jurisdiction.

The captain and two senior officers of the Cook Islands-registered oil tanker Eagle S were accused of dragging the anchor on the seabed for around 90 kilometres (56 miles), damaging five undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland on December 25, 2024.

The EstLink 2 power cable and four telecommunications cables connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged, one of several similar incidents last year.

With tensions mounting around the Baltic Sea since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many experts and political leaders have viewed the suspected sabotage as part of a "hybrid war" by Russia

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