Damage of two underwater fiber-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea—one between Lithuania and Sweden and the other between Finland and Germany—should be considered sabotage, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday.
“No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally. I also don’t want to believe in versions that these were ship anchors that accidentally caused the damage,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said before meeting of European Union defense ministers.
“So we have to state — without knowing in concrete terms who it came from—that this is a hybrid action. And we also have to assume—without already knowing it, obviously—that this is sabotage.”
A 218-kilometre (135-mile) internet link between Lithuania and Sweden's Gotland Island fell down at 8 a.m. GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania's Telia Lietuva, a subsidiary of Sweden's Telia Company.
Later, Cinia, the Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms corporation, disclosed that a secondary 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) cable linking Helsinki to the German port of Rostock had also ceased operating about 2 a.m. GMT on Monday.
According to Andrius Šemeškevičius, Chief Technology Officer of Telia, there have been no reported examples of sabotage.
"These failures are mostly related to shipping, when a ship hooks the cable and breaks it off somewhere in a shallow place, close to the shore, by dropping anchor incorrectly," he said Monday.
Lithuania's Navy said on Tuesday that it has intensified monitoring of its seas.
There are over 400 subsea cables worldwide, linking islands, countries, regions, and continents. According to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), subsea cables are roughly the thickness of a garden hose and employ optical fiber technology to carry electronic communications data at the speed of light.
Finland and Germany's foreign ministers announced in a joint statement on Nov. 18 that they were "deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea."
The ministers stated that "the fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times." "A thorough investigation is currently underway."
“Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors. Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies,” they added.
On November 18, a fracture was discovered in Cinia's C-Lion1 cable, which runs approximately 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) from the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the German port city of Rostock.
The rapid outage suggested that the cable had been fully broken by an outside force, but a physical check has yet to be performed, Cinia's CEO Ari-Jussi Knaapila told a press conference.
Cinia stated that the details of the issue are unknown and are being studied. Corrective actions have been launched, and a repair vessel is preparing to arrive at the location.
The specific repair period is unknown, however undersea cables are routinely repaired in 5 to 15 days.
In November 2023, Estonian prosecutors stated that they were investigating the involvement of the Hong Kong-registered NewNew Polar Bear cargo ship in the destruction of two underwater communication cables in the Baltic Sea.
On October 7 and 8, 20223, two cables linking Estonia to Finland and Sweden were destroyed, and an Estonia-Finland gas pipeline was disrupted, which Finnish authorities think was sabotage.
According to reports in May, China has not reacted to a six-month-old request for assistance with the inquiry.
The C-Lion1 cable connects the multibillion-dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The pipelines each have two pipes that deliver gas from Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. Three of four pipes were damaged by a series of blasts in the Swedish and Danish economic zones in September 2022, releasing massive volumes of methane into the atmosphere just seven months after the Russia-Ukraine war began.
According to examinations undertaken by Danish, German, and Swedish officials, the pipelines were damaged due to the use of explosives.
The Polish National Public Prosecutor's Office announced in August that German authorities had issued a European arrest order for a Ukrainian national named "Volodymyr Z." in connection with the Nord Stream explosions.
She mentioned Volodymyr Z. was not detained since he was not included in a wanted people database, implying that the Polish Border Guard had no knowledge of him and no reason to hold him.
This meant that in the beginning of July, he could leave Poland and go into Ukraine.
