Responsibility for these two incidents has not been established. But several European leaders see it as a possible new episode in a wave of sabotage, and judge that the clues point towards Moscow.
Is Russia behind the rupture of two telecommunications cables in less than 48 hours in the Baltic Sea? Moscow denied any involvement on Wednesday November 20, but doubt continues to hover elsewhere in Europe. Damage was reported to a cable linking Sweden and Lithuania on Sunday, then to another infrastructure between Finland and Germany on Monday. Although investigations are underway, several European leaders did not wait to raise the possibility of sabotage and the possible responsibility of Vladimir Putin's regime.
“No one believes that these cables were cut by accident. (…) We have to assume (…) that it is a question of sabotage”German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday. “Situations of this type must be assessed taking into account the growing threat posed by Russia in our neighborhood”estimated the defense ministers of Sweden and Lithuania.
On the Finnish side, we are being more careful. The country's security and intelligence service recalled that “200 submarine cable ruptures occur every year around the world”and that they can be linked to “human activity, such as fishing or anchoring”. The weather hypothesis also cannot be ruled out. But according to Finnish and Swedish media, a Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3which left the Baltic Sea early Tuesday morning after passing through a Russian port, is suspected of having played a role in both incidents.
While caution remains in order, this episode revives concerns around the war in Ukraine and its consequences for the rest of Europe. As of Monday evening, the foreign ministers of Germany and Finland, Annalena Baerbock and Elina Valtonen, warned that the security of the continent was “not only threatened by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, but also by hybrid wars waged by malicious actors”.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries have increasingly used this term to describe actions aimed at harming them carried out, according to them, by Moscow. “Hybrid warfare” refers to the use, against one's adversaries, of activities more subversive than conventional military operations, such as sabotage, political assassinations, espionage, cyberattacks, electoral interference and even disinformation. These means of action “bring on a platter the possibility of plausible deniability and often leave little evidence establishing their guilt”summarizes Arsalan Bilal, research fellow at the Center for Peace Studies at the Norwegian Arctic University, in the NATO Review.
The doubt surrounding Russia's responsibility for the rupture of the two cables in the Baltic Sea is the very reflection of the objectives of a protean war. “The damage to the cables would be consistent with Russian techniques, and their hybrid way of acting. analyzes Elisabeth Braw, researcher at an American think tank, the Atlantic Council, interviewed by L’Express. “More The whole point of such an operation is obviously that it is difficult to attribute.” On Wednesday, the Kremlin ruled “laughable” et “absurd” to accuse Russia.
Elisabeth Braw, this time interviewed by The Worldjudges that an accident is “extremely unlikely”, with regard to the simultaneity of the two events in the same area. According to this specialist in hybrid threats, if Russia is really at the origin of these cable breaks, its goal is not to cut the populations concerned from their means of communication, “but to show one's capacity to act, to harm”. “A country that uses these techniques wants to put pressure and sow doubt in the minds of those it attacks.” she adds.
While Vladimir Putin regularly presents the United States and Europe as his enemies, Arsalan Bilal considers that hybrid war is “a strategic necessity” for Moscow due to a “manifest power asymmetry”. It allows him to “reduce, or even compensate”an imbalance of “budget” and of “military technologies“.
Since the launch of the Russian offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, suspicious incidents have increased around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. The damage which led to the shutdown of the Balticconnector gas pipeline, linking Finland and Estonia, remains an enigma a year later. Finnish investigators have long suspected a shock with the anchor of a Chinese container ship, the Newnew Polar Bear. An underwater telecommunications cable between Sweden and Estonia was damaged the same month, in October 2023, by “an external force” or a “manipulation”according to Stockholm.
In the opposite direction, Russia was also confronted with a spectacular sabotage, that of the Nord Stream gas pipelines which connected it to Germany, in September 2022. An involvement of Moscow had, here too, been considered. Butthem years later, in August, le Wall Street Journal implicated the former Ukrainian chief of staff in this affair, an accusation described as “absolute nonsense” through kyiv. German justice has issued a European arrest warrant against a Ukrainian diving instructor suspected of being involved.
LDisruptions to GPS signals have also intensified in this strategic region. In April, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania accused Moscow of being responsible for widespread jamming that increases the risk of air accidents. The Finnish company Finnair even suspended its flights to Tartu (Estonia) for a month because of this interference, described by the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs “Russian hybrid attack”.
To respond to this threat, the British army announced in August the construction of an installation presented as one of the largest in Europe, intended to prepare its equipment for the risk of jamming the GPS signal.
Russia has also been accused of using its ships to carry out espionage activities in northern European waters. In August, drone overflights were also observed in Brunsbüttel (Germany), not far from the shores of the North Sea. The German foreign minister suggested that this illegal surveillance was linked to the presence of a chemical park and a nuclear waste storage facility nearby, and an investigation into “espionage with the aim of sabotage” was opened. by the local prosecutor's office.
