Undersea cables cut or damaged, and European governments hint at possible Russian sabotage
Two undersea cables carrying internet data deep in the Baltic Sea have been damaged, European telecommunications companies said, as European governments warned Russia could launch a “hybrid war” against global communications infrastructure.
The foreign ministers of Finland and Germany said in a joint statement on Monday that cables linking the two countries had been cut, in incidents that raised suspicions of possible sabotage.
“A thorough investigation is ongoing. Our European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war in Ukrainebut also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors,” the ministers said, without attributing the possible damage to any specific entity.
Stefan Sauer/Photo Alliance/Getty
Finnish company Cinia confirmed on Monday that its undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany had been damaged. The cable is approximately 730 miles long and connects telecommunications networks in Central Europe to Finland and other Nordic countries.
“Details of the failure are unknown and are currently under investigation,” the company said in a statement on its website.
Swedish company Arelion confirmed to CBS News on Tuesday that one of its cables was also damaged.
“We can confirm that one of our submarine cables – the one between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania’s Sventoy – is damaged. The issue was discovered on November 17 and we currently do not know the cause caused because we were unable to determine the cause inspecting the cables,” Arelion spokesman Martin Sjögren told CBS News.
“Arelion is in contact with the Swedish authorities and the Swedish Armed Forces regarding this incident. The cable will be repaired in the coming weeks depending on weather conditions,” he said.
Audrius Stasiulaitis, a spokesman for Swedish multinational telecommunications company Telia, which uses and operates the Arelion cable, said the company believed the cable had suffered physical damage.
“We can only speculate on what happened, but as far as we know it was not affected by an equipment failure, we presume it was physical damage,” he told CBS News by phone on Tuesday.
The cable damage follows reports over the past year that Russia may target critical infrastructure connecting the Nordic countries.
In April 2023, a joint investigation by Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish public broadcasters found that Moscow was operating a fleet of suspicious intelligence vessels in Nordic waters, a possible Kremlin target targeting underwater cables and wind power part of the action.
ever Attacks on European infrastructure Since the introduction of Russia full scale invasion of ukraine 1000 days ago.
In September 2022, the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, both designed to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, were damaged by explosions.
Ukraine and Russia have both denied involvement in the bombing. In August, German media reported that prosecutors had issued a Arrest warrant for a Ukrainian The men on the pipe attack.
Sweden and Finland both join nato military alliance The war in Ukraine over the past two years has heightened concerns about Russia’s possible intentions, and just this week the two countries updated their war preparation guidance and published an online pamphlet for citizens to prepare for the possibility of war or other crises.
