Suspicious incidents: Sabotage investigations into cable damage in the Baltic Sea

After two communications cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea, Swedish authorities are investigating possible sabotage. The police in the Scandinavian NATO country and the responsible public prosecutor Henrik Söderman said the crime is currently classified as sabotage. However, this classification could still change. Söderman also pointed out that the investigation was at an early stage. Further information cannot be released at the moment.

However, initial indications appear to point to suspicious ship movements in the region. These movements coincided in time and space with the incidents on the cables, Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin told TV4. This prompted the police to initiate an investigation into suspected sabotage. According to information from the Swedish broadcaster SVT, particular attention is being paid to a Chinese ship that is said to have passed the fiber optic cables on its way from a Russian oil port at the times in question.

With the suspicion of sabotage, the Swedes confirmed a suspicion that Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had already expressed that morning. He assumed that the damage to the submarine cables between Finland and Germany and between Sweden and Lithuania had been caused intentionally. “Nobody believes that these cables were cut accidentally,” said the SPD politician in Brussels. One must assume sabotage. However, there is no evidence of this yet.

Information highway between Helsinki and Rostock

One of the affected cables, called C-Lion1, runs 1,173 kilometers between Helsinki and Rostock. On Monday, the Finnish state company Cinia discovered a defect in the undersea line that went into operation in 2016 and acts as a kind of information highway on the seabed connecting Central Europe and data centers in Northern Europe. The connection partly runs along the same route as the Nord Stream pipelines that were destroyed two years ago.

Cinia assumes that the cable broke at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and was severed by external influences, such as an anchor or a bottom trawl. Whether it was intentional or not – like many things in the case, it is still unclear. Finnish Internet users are said to have not experienced any major disruptions so far. According to the Finnish Transport and Communications Authority, data traffic was not said to have been permanently disrupted. According to Cinia, repairing the cable should take around 5 to 15 days.

It was also announced on Monday that another data cable, the Arelion communication cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania, was damaged in the depths of the Baltic Sea. The General Prosecutor’s Office in Vilnius is investigating the circumstances and collecting information about the damage to the cable that occurred on Sunday.

This cable is said to be quite old and has experienced failures in the past, usually related to shipping errors. This time, however, one of the things that is suspicious is that this cable and C-Lion1 intersect at a point east of Gotland.

“We certainly cannot rule out sabotage as there have been warning signs before. This would not be the first time and it would not be anything new,” said Lithuanian Prime Minister-designate Gintautas Paluckas.

NATO focuses on critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines a good seven months later, the critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea has been more in the focus of the public and especially NATO. In autumn 2023, the Balticconnector pipeline, an important energy line between Finland and Estonia, was cut and a data cable between the two EU countries was also damaged.

According to Finnish investigators, the pipeline was most likely destroyed by the anchor of a Chinese container ship called the Newnew Polar Bear. It is still unclear whether the incident was an accident or deliberate sabotage.