Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, have been severed, raising suspicions of sabotage, the countries and companies involved say.
The episodes recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have investigated as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The 1,200-kilometre cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working around 0200 GMT on Monday, the Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia said.
A 218km internet link between Lithuania and Gotland Island in Sweden also went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Telia Lietuva of Lithuania.
Finland and Germany said in a joint statement issued on Monday that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.
Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors”, the joint statement said, without naming the actors.
“Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies,” Germany and Finland said.
A spokesperson for Telia Lietuva, Audrius Stasiulaitis, said the other cable was severed as well. It is owned and operated by Arelion of Sweden to carry the internet traffic of the Lithuanian telecom operator, the Telia spokesperson said.
“It is absolutely central that it is clarified why we currently have two cables in the Baltic Sea that are not working,” Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister of civil defence, told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
Located in northern Europe, the Baltic Sea is an active commercial shipping route and is ringed by nine countries including Russia.
The damage to the Finland-Germany cable occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland Island and could require five to 15 days to repair, Cinia’s chief executive, Ari-Jussi Knaapila, told a news conference.
Last year a subsea gas pipeline and several telecoms cables running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were severely damaged in an incident raising alarm bells in the region.
Investigators of the 2023 cases in Finland and Estonia have named a Chinese container ship that they believe dragged its anchor and caused the damage. But they have not said whether the damage was accidental or intentional.
In 2022 the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case that remains under investigation by German authorities.
The episodes recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have investigated as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The 1,200-kilometre cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working around 0200 GMT on Monday, the Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia said.
A 218km internet link between Lithuania and Gotland Island in Sweden also went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Telia Lietuva of Lithuania.
Finland and Germany said in a joint statement issued on Monday that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.
Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors”, the joint statement said, without naming the actors.
“Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies,” Germany and Finland said.
A spokesperson for Telia Lietuva, Audrius Stasiulaitis, said the other cable was severed as well. It is owned and operated by Arelion of Sweden to carry the internet traffic of the Lithuanian telecom operator, the Telia spokesperson said.
“It is absolutely central that it is clarified why we currently have two cables in the Baltic Sea that are not working,” Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister of civil defence, told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
Located in northern Europe, the Baltic Sea is an active commercial shipping route and is ringed by nine countries including Russia.
The damage to the Finland-Germany cable occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland Island and could require five to 15 days to repair, Cinia’s chief executive, Ari-Jussi Knaapila, told a news conference.
Last year a subsea gas pipeline and several telecoms cables running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were severely damaged in an incident raising alarm bells in the region.
Investigators of the 2023 cases in Finland and Estonia have named a Chinese container ship that they believe dragged its anchor and caused the damage. But they have not said whether the damage was accidental or intentional.
In 2022 the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case that remains under investigation by German authorities.
