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Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted, sparking warnings of possible ‘hybrid warfare’

18 November 2024 23:50 (UTC +04:00)

Two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea have been suddenly disrupted, according to local telecommunications companies, amid fresh warnings of possible Russian interference with global undersea infrastructure, APA reports citing CNN.

A communications cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut on Sunday morning around 10:00 a.m. local time, a spokesperson from telecommunications company Telia Lithuania confirmed to CNN.

The company’s monitoring systems could tell there was a cut due to the traffic disruption, and that the cause was likely physical damage to the cable itself, Telia Lithuania spokesperson Audrius Stasiulaitis told CNN. “We can confirm that the internet traffic disruption was not caused by equipment failure but by physical damage to the fiber optic cable.”

Another cable linking Finland and Germany was also disrupted, according to Cinia, the state-controlled Finnish company that runs the link. The C-Lion cable – the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and Central Europe – spans nearly 1,200 kilometers (730 miles), alongside other key pieces of infrastructure, including gas pipelines and power cables.

The area that Finnish public broadcaster, YLE, says was disrupted along the Finnish-German cable is roughly 60 to 65 miles away from the Lithuanian-Swedish cable that was cut, a CNN analysis of the undersea routes shows.

It is unclear what exactly caused the fault in the C-Lion – Cinia said in a statement that it is still investigating the issue. A physical inspection has not yet been conducted, Reuters reported citing the company’s chief executive Ari-Jussi Knaapila, who told a press conference on Monday that the sudden outage implied that the cable was cut by an outside force.

The foreign ministers of Finland and Germany said in a joint statement on Monday evening that they were “deeply concerned” about the severed C-Lion cable, and raised the possibility of “hybrid warfare.”

“The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times. A thorough investigation is underway,” the statement said. “Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.”