A second underwater telecommunications cable was damaged in the Baltic Sea, linking Sweden and Lithuania

This announcement comes as another cable, linking Finland to Germany, was cut on Monday.

A second submarine telecommunications cable, linking Sweden to Lithuania, has been damaged, the Swedish Minister of Civil Defense announced on Tuesday, November 19, the day after the announcement of the rupture of a cable linking Finland and Germany. “It is essential to clarify the reasons why two cables do not work in the Baltic Sea”declared Carl-Oskar Bohlin in a message to AFP.

The “Arelion” submarine cable which connects the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania has been damaged since Sunday morning and internet traffic has been redirected to other international connections, explained Audrius Stasiulaitis, spokesperson for the Lithuanian subsidiary of the Swedish operator Telia. “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 were not affected.

On Monday, the Finnish technology group Cinia announced that the C-Lion1 submarine cable between Finland and Germany had broken. The German Defense Minister estimated that a “sabotage” was certainly the cause of the damage observed on these two telecommunications cables. “No one believes these cables were cut by accident”said Boris Pistorius. For his part, thehe Finnish police announced on Tuesday the opening of an investigation.

The day before, Berlin and Helsinki cited the Russian threat and the “hybrid war” led according to them by the Kremlin. 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.