Nato officials suspect Russia has been using the wreck of the MS Estonia cruise ship as a training area as well as potentially for espionage activities, according to several reports in German media.
MS Estonia sank near the Finnish island of Utö in the Baltic Sea on 28 September 1994 while sailing from Tallinn to Stockholm, with the loss of 852 lives, making it one of the worst and deadliest maritime disasters in European history.
An investigation by Germany's public service broadcasters WDR and NDR as well as the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung has uncovered evidence that technical devices were placed at the wreck some years ago which enable precise navigation of underwater drones and robots.
Western security officials now believe that Russian armed forces have used the devices to train in the area. There are also suspicions that Russian agents could use the MS Estonia for spying by concealing sensory devices in the wreckage.
Such devices could record identifiable features of Nato warships and submarines, such as the sounds of their propellers.
An agreement signed by countries whose citizens perished in the disaster declared sanctity over the site, which aimed to prohibit any diving or maritime activity in the wreck area. The treaty however only applies to signatory countries.
This means that other nations could conceivably conduct operations there, undisturbed.
Finland temporarily suspended the agreement in July 2021 in order to conduct an investigation into the cause of the sinking, but this suspension ended at the end of 2024.
When approached by the German media outlets, the Finnish Border Guard declined to comment on the possibility that Russia was engaging in training and espionage activities around the area of the wreckage.
