(AFP) NATO will send ships, aircraft and drones to the Baltic Sea in response to submarine cables damaged by suspected Russian sabotage, the alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, announced on Tuesday (14).
“I’m not going to go into details about the exact number of ships, because that can vary from week to week, and we don’t want the enemy to know any more than they already do,” Rutte said at a press conference.
“The important thing is to use the right military means, in the right places and at the right time, to prevent future acts of destabilization,” he added.
Several underwater telecommunications and energy cables have been damaged in the Baltic Sea in recent months.
These acts are part of what experts and politicians describe as a “hybrid war” between Russia and Western countries.
The leaders of the NATO countries bordering the Baltic met in Finland on Tuesday to discuss how to increase security in the area.
In addition to Rutte, the Helsinki meeting, co-chaired by Finland and Estonia, was attended by the leaders of Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden and the executive vice-president of the European Commission, Henna Virkkunen.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb emphasized the need to diversify energy sources and means of communication. “We cannot prevent all acts of sabotage,” he said.
“More than 95% of Internet traffic is carried by undersea cables and 1.3 million kilometers of cables ensure financial transactions worth an estimated US$10 trillion every day,” said Rutte.
The Estlink 2 submarine power cable between Finland and Estonia, as well as four other telecommunications cables, were damaged on December 25, a few weeks after two telecommunications cables in Swedish waters were damaged.
The Finnish police suspect the oil tanker Eagle S, sailing under the Cook Islands flag, of “sabotaging” these cables. The ship has been taken to Porvoo, east of Helsinki, and its crew has been banned from leaving the country.
It is suspected that the ship is part of a “ghost fleet” that helps Russia avoid the sanctions against its oil sector, introduced in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
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