Baltic Sea cable sabotage suspected in hybrid warfare probe
On Tuesday, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced that the damage to two underwater fibre-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea is considered sabotage, even though the perpetrators remain unknown. The authorities of Germany, Finland, and Sweden are investigating the mysterious failures of critical infrastructure.
Last week, two important underwater communication cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged. On 17th November, Telia reported a fault in the fibre-optic cable connecting Lithuania with Sweden. On the same day, the Finnish company Cinia reported a break in a similar cable between Helsinki and Rostock, Germany.
"No one believes that the cables were accidentally damaged. I also don’t want to believe that the ships’ anchors caused the damage by accident," said German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Tuesday before the meeting of European Union defence ministers in Brussels, as quoted by Reuters.
"We have to assume, without certain information, that the damage is caused by sabotage," emphasised Pistorius.
According to Andrius Semeskevicius, Chief Technical Officer of the Swedish company Telia, it is still unclear whether the cable fault between Lithuania and Sweden resulted from damage or intentional breakage. In an interview with the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, he assured that the problem did not cause more serious disruptions in data transmission, and customers are using alternative connections.
The cable between Lithuania and Sweden connects at the seabed with the cable route between Helsinki and Rostock. The Finnish fibre-optic service provider Cinia reported the break of this connection south of Öland island in the Swedish economic zone. The fault's cause remains unknown; accidental damage and intentional actions are suspected.
Investigation into Baltic Sea faults
The authorities of Finland and Germany have launched an investigation into possible sabotage. "Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors,'" representatives of both countries stated in a declaration quoted by AFP.
At the same time, Sweden's Minister of Civil Defence, Carl-Johan Bohlin, stated that the government is closely monitoring the situation's progress and that relevant agencies have initiated investigations. Bohlin stressed the importance of understanding the reasons behind the issues affecting the two cables in the Baltic Sea.
