Baltic Sea | Damaged telecommunications cables revive suspicions of Russian “hybrid war”

(Stockholm) Two telecommunications cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea in forty-eight hours between Finland and Germany on the one hand, and Sweden and Lithuania on the other, reviving suspicions of “sabotage” and ” hybrid war” with Russia.

The “C-Lion1”, a 1,172-kilometer submarine cable linking Helsinki to Rostock, a port on the Baltic Sea in northeastern Germany, was broken on Monday after the detection of a “fault”, according to its operator , the Finnish technology group Cinia.

This rupture, located south of the island of Öland in Swedish waters, some 700 km from Helsinki, led to the cutting of all the fiber connections of this cable. “This type of rupture does not occur in these waters without external impact,” added the public group.

Finnish police have opened an investigation, after receiving a request from Cinia, and are “trying to establish what happened during the incident,” they announced in a statement.

Meeting in Brussels on Monday, the foreign ministers of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, and of Finland, Elina Valtonen, discussed the Russian threat.

“Our European security is not only threatened by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also by hybrid wars waged by malicious actors,” they said, “such an incident immediately arouses suspicion of damage caused intentionally.

European countries are increasingly using the term “hybrid war” to describe actions aimed at harming them, according to them, carried out by Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

On Sunday morning, another telecommunications cable, the “Arelion”, linking the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania, was damaged, Audrius Stasiulaitis, spokesperson for the Lithuanian subsidiary of the Swedish operator Telia, explained on Tuesday. Internet traffic has been redirected to other international connections.

“We can confirm that the interruption of internet traffic was not caused by an equipment fault, but by material damage to the fiber optic cable,” he detailed, specifying that customers do not were not affected.

Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin assured Tuesday that the competent authorities in his country were investigating these incidents.

“It is essential to clarify the reasons why two cables do not work in the Baltic Sea,” he said in a message to AFP, without commenting on potential perpetrators.

« Sabotage » ?

The German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, for his part estimated on Tuesday that “sabotage” was certainly at the origin of the damage.

“No one believes these cables were cut by accident,” he said.

Several incidents have taken place in recent months in the Baltic area, a maritime zone shared by the Nordic and Baltic countries, Poland and Germany, which are concerned about threats of destabilization attributed to Moscow.

Faced with the increase in these attacks, former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö called for the establishment of an intelligence cooperation service within the European Union, in a report submitted to the Commission at the end of October.

Finland has also stepped up monitoring of incidents in the Baltic Sea since the outbreak of war between neighboring Russia and Ukraine.

“I don’t believe in the anchor versions [de bateaux] which would have accidentally caused damage to these cables,” added the German Defense Minister.

In October 2023, an underwater gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia had to be closed after damage caused by an anchor from a Chinese cargo ship.

These incidents also recall the sabotage in September 2022 of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which has not yet been clarified. In August, the Wall Street Journal accused the former Ukrainian chief of staff, an accusation described as “absolute nonsense” by Kyiv.

Tensions in the Baltic Sea have increased since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Moscow sees the increased NATO presence near its borders as a provocation and a threat to its security.

With the accession of Sweden, after that of Finland, all the states bordering the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, are now members of the Atlantic Alliance.