BERLIN — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Tuesday said “nobody believes” that two broken telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea were “accidentally cut.”
“We have to conclude, without knowing exactly who did it, that it is a hybrid action and we also have to assume — without knowing it — that it is sabotage,” Pistorius told reporters in Brussels on the sidelines of a Council of the European Union meeting.
The Finnish network company Cinia said Monday it was investigating a broken undersea internet cable running between Santahamina near Helsinki and Rostock in Germany — in a submarine incident that sparked political alarm in Berlin and Helsinki.
The 1,173 kilometer-long cable follows a similar route to the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream gas pipelines, which exploded in September 2022 in an apparent act of sabotage.
Also speaking on the sidelines of the meeting in Brussels, Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said: “We are now investigating what has happened. We have good capabilities through all of this to investigate what has happened and who has been there.”
Finland’s Europe Minister Joakim Strand commented on the issue too, calling it “concerning.”
“Our authorities together with the companies are proactively investigating the case. The telecommunications have been re-routed to back-up connections and practical impacts have been minimal. The cable of course will be repaired. It is too soon to speculate on any causes but of course this is concerning,” he added.
Another telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea running between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland island was damaged Sunday morning, the Swedish telecoms company Telia Lietuva reported Monday.
The suspected case of sabotage comes as European foreign ministers, meeting in Warsaw on Tuesday, warned that Russia is “systematically attacking” Europe’s security architecture.
“Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks,” the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain and the U.K. said in a joint declaration.
In October last year, the Balticconnector gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia was damaged. A telecom cable linking Estonia to Sweden was also damaged on the same night, along with one of Russia’s telecom cables in the Gulf of Finland.
A probe into the matter centered on a Chinese vessel, NewNew Polar Bear, which was in the area at the time of the damage.
This story is being updated.
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