Cables damaged in the Baltic Sea: what we know about this “sabotage” denounced by Germany and Finland

Germany denounces “sabotage”. Two telecommunications cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea in forty-eight hours, between Finland and Germany on the one hand, and Sweden and Lithuania on the other. A voluntary act for the German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius.

The governments concerned announced on Monday the opening of an investigation into the causes of the rupture of these submarine optical fiber cables. In a joint statement, Germany and Finland speak of a “hybrid war” and underline the Russian threat in the region. Here is what we know about this incident.

What happened?

The “C-Lion1”, a 1,172 km submarine cable linking Helsinki to Rostock, a Baltic Sea port in northeastern Germany, was broken on Monday after the detection of a “fault”, according to its operator, the Finnish technology group Cinia. This rupture, located south of the island of Öland in Swedish waters, some 700 km from Helsinki, led to the cutting of all the fiber connections of this cable. “This type of rupture does not occur in these waters without external impact,” added the public group.

Several open investigations

Finnish police have announced the opening of an investigation into the break in the cable linking Helsinki to Rostock, Germany, and assure that they are working “to establish what happened during the incident”, in a press release .

For its part, the Swedish prosecutor’s office announced that it was launching an investigation for “sabotage”, with the support of Germany, this Tuesday. “It is essential to clarify the reasons why two cables do not work in the Baltic Sea,” said Swedish Minister of Civil Defense Carl-Oskar Bohlindit in a message to AFP, without commenting on potential perpetrators. .

Russian “sabotage”?

Meeting in Brussels on Monday, the foreign ministers of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, and Finland, Elina Valtonen, discussed the Russian threat and referred to a “hybrid war”, a term regularly used by European countries to describe actions aimed at harming them carried out, according to them, by Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Our European security is not only threatened by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine but also by hybrid wars waged by malicious actors,” they said, “such an incident immediately arouses suspicion of damage caused intentionally.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius estimated on Tuesday that “sabotage” was to blame for the damage. “No one believes that these cables were cut by accident,” he said, refuting the version that “anchors accidentally caused damage to these cables.”

Sweden and Lithuania, after Finland and Germany the day before, said on Tuesday they were “deeply concerned” by the break in the cable connecting their two countries. “Situations of this type must be assessed taking into account the growing threat posed by Russia in our neighborhood,” the defense ministers of the two countries said, citing “an increasing number of hybrid activities in Europe”.

A region under high tension

Several incidents have taken place in recent months in the Baltic area, a maritime zone shared by the Nordic and Baltic countries, Poland and Germany, which are concerned about threats of destabilization attributed to Moscow since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Faced with the increase in these attacks, the former Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, called for the establishment of an intelligence cooperation service within the European Union, in a report submitted to the Commission at the end of October. Finland has also stepped up monitoring of incidents in the Baltic Sea since the outbreak of war between neighboring Russia and Ukraine.

In October 2023, an underwater gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia had to be closed after damage caused by an anchor from a Chinese cargo ship. These incidents also recall the sabotage in September 2022 of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which has not yet been clarified. In August, the Wall Street Journal implicated the former Ukrainian chief of staff, an accusation described as “absolute nonsense” by kyiv.

Moscow sees the increase in NATO’s presence near its borders as a provocation and a threat to its security. With the accession of Sweden, after that of Finland, all the states bordering the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, are now members of the Atlantic Alliance.