The hypothesis of sabotage was quickly ruled out. Finland was once again faced with the double break of a terrestrial telecommunications cable with Sweden, Tuesday December 3, 2024. The telecommunications company GlobalConnect reported on its website a double break of a terrestrial optical cable in Finland on Monday, one of which has already been repaired.
“We take this seriously”
“The authorities are investigating this matter in collaboration with the company,” Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications Lulu Ranne said on X in the morning. “We are taking the situation seriously. » Sweden quickly, through its Minister of Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, reported suspicions of « sabotage » . “The (Swedish) government has taken note of this information. We take this seriously,” he declared in a message to theAgence France-Presse.
A “normal incident”
But this theory was quickly denied by the police. She specifies, in a press release, that she “is not currently conducting a criminal investigation into damage to a fiber optic cable between Finland and Sweden. The police are establishing what happened, in collaboration with other authorities,” she clarified. Early this afternoon, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency announced that “Both cables appear to have been cut during construction work, so this is a normal incident.”
A Chinese ship involved two weeks ago
This rupture comes approximately two weeks after the rupture of two telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea, one linking the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania, and the other Finland to Germany. In this investigation, suspicion is directed towards a Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3, which according to maritime traffic monitoring sites passed over the cables when they were cut.
Stockholm wants this bulk carrier to return to its territorial waters in order to contribute to the investigation.
Belgium
