Two undersea optical communication cables in the Baltic Sea (including one connecting Finland and Germany) have been cut, raising suspicions that they were sabotaged by bad actors.
Monday's episode recalls other incidents in the same waterway that authorities are investigating as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cable last year and a North Sea gas pipeline explosion in 2022. I let it happen.
The 1,200-kilometer cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped functioning at around 2 a.m. GMT on Monday, Finnish state-run cybersecurity and communications company Senior said.
The 218-kilometer (135-mile) internet link between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland went out at around 8 a.m. GMT on Sunday, Lithuania's Telia Lietva, part of Sweden's Telia Group, said.
Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned that the undersea cable had been cut” and were investigating the “incident, which immediately raises suspicions of deliberate damage.”
The joint statement said European security was threatened by Russia's war against Ukraine and a “hybrid war by malign actors,” without naming the actors.
“Protecting our shared critical infrastructure is critical to our national security and the resilience of our societies,” Germany and Finland said.
Telia Lietuva spokesperson Audrius Stasiulaitis said the other cable was also cut. It is owned and operated by Sweden's Arelion to carry Telia Lietuva's internet traffic, a Telia spokesperson said.
Karl-Oskar Bolin, Sweden's Minister of Civil Defense, told Swedish public broadcaster SVT: “It is extremely important to find out why the two cables in the Baltic Sea are currently not working.”
Located in northern Europe, the Baltic Sea is an active commercial shipping route and is surrounded by nine countries, including Russia.
The damage to the cable connecting Finland and Germany occurred near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Oland, and repair could take five to 15 days, said Senior CEO Ari Jussi Kunapila. He said this at a press conference.
Last year, an incident that caused serious damage to an undersea gas pipeline and several communication cables that run along the Baltic Sea floor caused alarm in the region.
Investigators in the 2023 incidents in Finland and Estonia have named a Chinese container ship believed to have dragged its anchor and caused the damage. However, it did not say whether the damage was accidental or intentional.
In 2022, an explosion destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany in the Baltic Sea, and German authorities are still investigating the incident.
