Sweden investigates the breakage of two communications cables in the Baltic Sea as possible sabotage

The authorities of Finland, Sweden and Lithuania are investigating the damage suffered by two submarine telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea, the C-Lion1 – which connects Helsinki with the German port of Rostock – and the Arelion – which links Lithuania with the Swedish island of Gotland-, with the premise that in both cases they could have been due to intentional acts.

The Swedish Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation this Tuesday, with support from Germany, into the two damaged cables. “Currently, the classification of the crime is sabotage; There is a preliminary investigation underway at an early stage. There is no further information about the case at the moment,” Swedish prosecutor Henrik Söderman said in a statement.

The National Investigation Office of Finland (KRP) also announced this Tuesday the opening of joint investigations with Sweden into the failure of the C-Lion1, since the damage to this Finnish cable occurred near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Öland and within of Sweden’s exclusive economic zone. The C-Lion1 stopped working in the early hours of Monday, probably after being cut off “by an external force,” according to the cybersecurity and telecommunications network company Cinia, controlled by the Finnish State, reported at the time.

The Arelion telecommunications cable between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland was cut on Sunday in an area a short distance from the damaged Finnish cable, although the fact did not become known until Monday. “We can confirm that the interruption of internet traffic was not due to equipment failure, but to material damage to the fiber optic cable,” a spokesperson for the Lithuanian subsidiary of the Swedish operator Telia said on Tuesday. The Lithuanian National Crisis Management Center (NKVC) also indicated that it does not rule out sabotage.

On the other hand, the Swedish armed forces and coast guard detected “ship movements that correspond in time and space with the interruptions” of two cables, according to what the Swedish Minister of Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, told the network this Tuesday. TV4. The Finnish press speculates with the possibility that it is the Chinese merchant Yi Peng 3which left the Baltic Sea early Tuesday morning, followed by the Danish Navy, and appeared on the radar of several countries.

These two incidents of infrastructure failure in Baltic waters are in addition to the damage suffered in October 2023 by the Balticconnector underwater gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable, both between Finland and Estonia. Although the investigations have not yet been concluded, the most likely hypothesis is that the two breaks were caused by the anchor of the Chinese merchant ship. New Polar Bearwhich was heading to the Russian city of Saint Petersburg. The question is whether this would have happened by accident, as Beijing maintains, or whether it was a deliberate action.

In October 2023, the Balticconnector underwater gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable, both between Finland and Estonia, were damaged, and the investigation, without concluding, points to a Chinese ship

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius described the damage to the two cables as a “hybrid action” and rejected the hypothesis of an accidental cause. “No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally and I also do not want to believe the versions that they were anchors that coincidentally caused damage to these cables,” said Pistorius upon his arrival in Brussels for the meeting of EU defense ministers.

The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, who had already made a joint statement on Monday with her Finnish counterpart, Elina Valtonen, warning of “hybrid wars”, stated this Tuesday that “it cannot be a coincidence” and hinted that she sees there the hand of Moscow. “Situations of this type must be evaluated in light of the growing threat that Russia represents in our neighborhood,” the Swedish Defense Ministers, Pål Jonson, and Lithuanian, Laurynas Kasciunas, stressed in a statement.

These incidents in underwater infrastructure and the security issues that surround them call to mind the largest and most worrying event in the Baltic Sea: the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022. Those inexplicable leaks in the pipelines unleashed cross accusations about perpetrators Russian or Western-based. The latest investigations point to a probable Ukrainian authorship.