Finnish Defence Forces have registered an attack on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland, in the Baltic Sea. The news was announced by a spokesperson for the Finnish army, who said the forces are monitoring the situation following the incident. Authorities in Helsinki stressed that the country does not face any immediate military threat.
The army did not provide further details on the nature of the attack or the exact identity of the struck vessel, Albanian Post reported. The attack on the Russian ship in the Gulf of Finland was recorded near the Russian island of Gogland, about 40 kilometres south of the Finnish coast. A senior Finnish official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed this.
Estonian media report that the target of the attack was a small vessel of the Russian navy, which returned to Saint Petersburg after the incident. Suspicions have focused on an operation by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), which previously announced that it had hit the Russian missile ship “Naro-Fominsk“.
The timing and location of the attack match, raising the possibility that the incident registered by the Finnish army was indeed the Ukrainian operation against this vessel. So far there is no official confirmation that it is the same target. The “Naro-Fominsk” belongs to Russia’s Baltic Fleet and is equipped with advanced weapons systems: it has an eight-cell Kalibr-NK vertical launch system, Oniks cruise missiles, as well as a 100 mm artillery gun and air defence systems.
According to Ukraine’s Security Service, the attack was planned in advance and carried out during a night operation, as a response to Russian aggression.