Berlin rules out the possibility that the fiber optic cable break was accidental. It is not yet clear who was behind the alleged attack.
(DW) German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday (19/11) that the damage caused to a submarine data transmission cable connecting Germany to Finland was probably the result of an act of sabotage.
The damage was first reported on Monday. The authorities said that the 1,173-kilometer C-Lion cable, which crosses the Baltic Sea from the Finnish capital Helsinki to the German port of Rostock, was allegedly broken by an “external force”.
The CEO of Finnish cyber security and telecommunications network company Cinia said that the damage occurred near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Oland and that it would take five to 15 days to repair.
Sweden’s Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin reported on Monday that a second submarine cable had been damaged. The incident occurred in the same maritime region where the Nord Stream gas pipelines were sabotaged in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in February of that year.
The first of the alleged attacks occurred against a 218-kilometer-long internet data line between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland on Sunday morning, telecommunications company Telia Lietuva reported.
The second incident hit the almost 1,200-kilometer cable between Helsinki and Rostock, which stopped transmitting data early Monday afternoon, according to Cinia.
Sweden and Finland have announced the opening of a joint investigation. The Lithuanian Navy has announced that it will step up its presence in the Baltic Sea. Finnish and German authorities are already investigating the causes of Monday’s rupture.
“It can’t just be a coincidence”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Europe will remain united in the face of hybrid threats following the disruption of fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea.
“We are now also experiencing this in Germany […] with cyber attacks, spying on critical infrastructure, parcels suddenly exploding when transported on planes and yesterday […] a data transmission cable between Finland and Germany, which probably also affected Sweden,” said Baerbock. “That can’t be just a coincidence.”
“Nobody believes that these cables were cut accidentally. I also don’t want to believe versions that it was anchors that accidentally caused damage to these cables,” Pistorius said ahead of a meeting of European Union (EU) defense ministers in Brussels.
“So we have to state, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it was a ‘hybrid’ action. We also have to assume, without knowing yet, that it is sabotage,” he added.
Threats to European security
Although Pistorius hasn’t been able to produce any evidence to confirm his suspicions, Estonia’s Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, based on his preliminary information, doesn’t believe it was due to a “natural cause” either.
“European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors,” said a joint statement by the foreign ministers of Germany and Finland on Monday evening.
NATO’s Maritime Command (Marcom) estimates that threats to underwater structures are increasing. “These attacks demonstrate how vulnerable these infrastructures can be. NATO is increasing patrols in the vicinity of these facilities.”
Earlier this year, Marcom warned that the security of almost a billion people across Europe and North America was under threat from Russian attempts to target the extensive vulnerabilities of underwater infrastructure, including wind farms, which it said were vulnerable to attack.
Similar events in recent years
In September 2022, explosions ruptured both sections of the Russian Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline and one of the two sections of Nord Stream 2 near the Danish island of Bornholm. The pipelines carried natural gas from Russia to Germany and central Europe. The case has not yet been fully clarified, but there are strong indications of sabotage – and the main suspects are people allegedly loyal to Ukraine.
In October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged in what the Finnish authorities said was probably a deliberate act. Finland and China have been engaged in diplomatic talks since October last year about the possible role of a Hong Kong-registered cargo ship in the damage to the pipeline.
Also in October 2023, Sweden reported that an undersea cable with Estonia had been damaged.
Both Finland and Sweden joined NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, abandoning the neutrality adopted by both nations during the Cold War.
rc/md (Reuters, AFP, dpa)