Who is sabotaging the telecommunications of the Europe that overlooks the Baltic? Because that, sabotage, seems to be what happened this week when they appeared two underwater telecommunications cables damaged that cross this sea. One of them connects Germany with Finland and the other goes from Lithuania to Sweden.
The cable that connects Helsinki with the German port of Rostock It stopped working in the early hours of Monday, according to the Finnish cybersecurity and telecommunications company Cinia. The other, between Lithuania and an island in Swedenwas interrupted hours before (on Sunday), according to the Lithuanian company Telia Lietuva (of the Swedish group Telia).
The Germany-Finland cable
The affected connection is the C-Lion1, which connects Helsinki with Rostock across the floor of the Baltic Sea. It is an infrastructure of high-capacity optical fiber with a length of 1,173 kilometers. The damage occurred near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Oland and could take between five and fifteen 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 its cable could have been cut off “by an external force.” “These types of breaks do not occur in these waters without an external impact,” a spokesperson told local media.
The Lithuania-Sweden cable
The connection between Šventoji, in Lithuania, and the Swedish island of Gotland, measures 218 kilometers and manages approximately a third of Lithuania’s Internet capacity, inform 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 contacted allies to examine the situation.
Suspected intentional damage
The area affected by the cutting of the Finnish-German cable is located about 100 kilometers away of the cut Lithuanian-Swedish cable, According to an analysis done by the cnn of underwater routes.
In a joint statement, the Foreign Ministries of both countries have expressed their concern. “We are deeply concerned about the cut submarine cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea, which raises suspicions of intentional damage“, they indicated on Monday.
Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “the hybrid war of malicious actors”, reads the joint statement, without naming the actors. “Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital for our security and the resilience of our societies,” Germany and Finland said.
The Finnish National Investigation Bureau (KRP) announced this Tuesday that it has begun investigations to try to find out the causes. The German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, has been more explicit. “No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally,” he said. “We have to declare, without knowing specifically where it came from, that this is a hybrid action. And we also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage,” Pistorius declared.
“We are collecting data from the authorities and our partners in the region, who are monitoring what exactly happened,” said Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the Lithuanian National Crisis Management Center (NKVC). “We are now investigating what happened and “We have good capabilities to investigate through all this, see what has happened, who has been there.”declared the Finnish Minister of Defense, Antti Häkkänen.
Other recent “sabotages”
The episodes remind other incidents also occurred in the Baltic and that the authorities have considered potentially malicious. These are the cases of the damage suffered by a gas pipeline and submarine cables in 2023 and the 2022 explosions of the North Sea gas pipelines.
Investigators into the 2023 cases in Finland and Estonia have named a Chinese container ship they believe dragged its anchor and caused the damage. What they haven’t said is whether the damage was accidental or intentional. In 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Germany were destroyed by explosions in a case that continues to be investigated by German authorities.
War drums in the Baltic?
The Baltic Sea in northern Europe is an active maritime trade 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 will launch its invasion of Ukraine.
War drums? The truth is that both the Swedish and Finnish governments have updated their guidance to citizens on how to survive war. Millions of households in the Nordic nations will receive leaflets with instructions on how to prepare for the effects of military conflicts, communications outages and electricity outages.