Who is sabotaging the telecommunications of the Europe that overlooks the Baltic? Because that, a sabotage, seems to be what happened this week when the following have appeared two submarine telecommunications cables were damaged that cross this sea. One of them connects Germany with Finland and the other goes from Lithuania a Sweden.
The cable that connects Helsinki with the German port of Rostock. stopped working in the early hours of Monday morning, Finnish cybersecurity and telecommunications company Cinia reported. The other, between Lithuania and an island in Swedenwas interrupted hours earlier (Sunday), according to the Lithuanian company Telia Lietuva (part of the Swedish Telia group).
The Germany-Finland cable
The connection concerned is the C-Lion1, which links Helsinki to Rostock via the Baltic Sea floor. It is an infrastructure of high-capacity fiber optic infrastructure with a length of 1,173 kilometers.. The damage occurred near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Oland and could take five to 15 days to repair, Cinia estimated. According to BBC, the outage did not affect Internet traffic, as other cable routes were available.
The C-Lion cable is the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and Central Europe. The Finnish company said that its cable could have been cut “by an external force.” “These types of breaks do not occur in these waters without an external impact,” a spokesman told local media.
The Lithuania-Sweden cable
The connection between Šventoji in Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland, is 218 kilometers long and manages approximately one third of Lithuania’s Internet capacity, reports Reuters. It is operated by Arelion, a Swedish telecommunications company, which detected the problem on Sunday during a routine check.
The company expects the cable to be repaired in the next few weeks, depending on weather conditions. The Lithuanian Navy has increased its surveillance in the Baltic and has been in contact with allies to review the situation.
Suspicions of malicious damage
The area affected by the cutting of the Finnish-German cable is located at. about 100 kilometers away from the cut Lithuanian-Swedish cable, according to an analysis made by the CNN of the submarine routes.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministries of both countries have shown their concern. “We are deeply concerned about the severed submarine cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea, which raises suspicions of intentional damage“, they said Monday.
Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors”, read the joint statement, without naming the actors. “Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructures is vital for our security and the resilience of our societies,” Germany and Finland said.
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (KRP) announced Tuesday that it has launched inquiries to try to ascertain the causes. More explicit has been German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. “No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally,” he said. “We have to state, without knowing specifically where it has come from, that. this is a hybrid action. And we have to assume also, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage,” Pistorius said.
“We are gathering data from the authorities and our partners in the region, who are monitoring what exactly happened,” Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center (NKVC), said for his part. “We are now investigating what has happened and. we have good capabilities to investigate through all this, to see what has happened, who has been there.”Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said.
Other recent “sabotage
The episodes recall other incidents that have also occurred in the Baltic. and which the authorities have considered potentially malicious. These are the cases of the 2023 damage to a gas pipeline and subsea cables and the 2022 explosions of the North Sea gas pipelines.
Investigators of the 2023 cases in Finland and Estonia have given the name of a Chinese container ship that they believe dragged its anchor and caused the damage. What they have not said is. whether the damage was accidental or intentional. In 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines linking Russia to Germany were destroyed. by explosions in a case that is still under investigation by German authorities.
War drums in the Baltic?
The Baltic Sea in northern Europe is an active trade sea route and is surrounded by nine countries, including. Russia. On the other side, Sweden and Finland, two nations that have joined NATO. in the last two years, after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
War drums? What is certain is that both the Swedish and Finnish governments have updated their guidance to citizens on how to survive the war.. Millions of households in the Nordic nations will receive booklets with instructions on how to prepare for the effects of military conflicts, communications blackouts and power outages.