“Russia and China will never admit”… What is this sabotage of cables in the Baltic Sea?

What is happening in the Baltic Sea? Two submarine telecommunications cables were damaged on Sunday and Monday between Finland and Germany on the one hand, and Sweden and Lithuania on the other. “We are clearly in an act of hybrid warfare,” assures 20 Minutes political analyst Louis Duclos, these incidents having occurred in particular just after the authorization given by Joe Biden to the Ukrainians to use ATACMS missiles on Russian territory. Here is what we know this Friday about this affair, which is shaking up the countries concerned.

Which cables were damaged?

The “C-Lion1”, a 1,172 kilometer submarine cable linking Helsinki to Rostock, a Baltic Sea port in northeastern Germany, was broken on Monday, 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 fiber connections of this cable. On Sunday morning, another telecommunications cable, the “Arelion”, linking the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania, had also been damaged, Audrius Stasiulaitis, spokesperson for the Lithuanian subsidiary of the Swedish operator Telia, explained on Tuesday.

These cable breaks did not have a major effect: internet traffic via the “Arelion” was notably rerouted using other international connections and customers were not affected, said a spokesperson for the Lithuanian subsidiary of the Swedish operator Telia. Finnish police have opened an investigation and are “trying to establish what happened during the incident,” they announced in a statement. Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin assured Tuesday that the competent authorities in his country were also investigating these incidents.

Russia and China in the viewfinder

These two incidents have revived suspicions of “sabotage” and “hybrid war” with Russia. 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. The Kremlin on Wednesday deemed it “laughable” and “absurd” to accuse Russia.

A Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3, which left the Russian port of Ust Luga, west of St. Petersburg, on November 15, may have played a role in both incidents, where it was located when they happened. The Danish navy is in any case very closely interested, and is now monitoring the Chinese boat, which has been stationary since Tuesday evening in the Kattegat, between Denmark and the west coast of Sweden.

Its fate seems to depend on the evolution of the Swedish judicial investigation but also on diplomatic contacts between the countries concerned, in particular Denmark, China and Sweden, due to its location in international waters. For its part, Chinese diplomacy has rejected any suspicion.

“The Royal Danish Navy has not yet boarded the ship which is in international territorial waters,” explained this Friday to 20 Minutes Louis Duclos, geopolitical analyst. But he will not be able to leave like that, because as far as the cable between the Swedish island and Lithuania is concerned, he was really vertical to the cable at the time when the incident took place, so everything suggests that it was this ship that caused the damage, certainly by letting the anchor drag. »

Why sabotage these communications cables?

“We must analyze the timing in which this incident occurs,” explains Louis Duclos. Biden authorizes the use of ATACMS missiles on Russian territory, and the next day these cables are cut. We are clearly in the process of an act of hybrid war, even if Russia and China will never admit that they did this. » However, it remains to be clarified the mechanism that was set in motion so that it was a Chinese boat that found itself involved. “We still lack elements,” admits the analyst. Does China really have anything to do with all this? Is this a way for her to support Russia? The subject is very sensitive, and there is very little information that filters out. »

For Louis Duclos, there is in any case no doubt that it is a question of “dissuasion.” » The Kremlin thus shows that it has “the capacity to cut communications between these NATO members, that it can thus attack the critical infrastructures of these countries in the event of conflict. » But it is also “communication”, like the ballistic missile sent to Dnipro on Thursday.

Moscow, for its part, sees the increase in NATO's 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.

How are these countries reacting to the increase in incidents in the Baltic Sea?

Tensions in the Baltic Sea have increased since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In October 2023, an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged, as the Finnish investigation later showed, by the anchor of a Chinese freighter which had continued its route.

These incidents also recall the sabotage in September 2022 of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which has not yet been clarified. THE Wall Street Journal implicated the former chief of staff of the Ukrainian army, an accusation described as “absolute nonsense” by kyiv, but German justice issued a European arrest warrant against a Ukrainian diving instructor , suspected of being involved in the sabotage. However, the involvement of the Ukrainian state has not been confirmed at this stage by the multiple ongoing investigations.

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