Very concerning!
"... Power and communications cables and gas pipelines stitch together the nine countries with shores on the Baltic, a relatively shallow and nearly landlocked sea. A few examples are the 94-mile Balticconnector pipeline that carries gas between Finland and Estonia, the high-voltage Baltic Cable connecting the power grids of Sweden and Germany, and the 729-mile C-Lion1 telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany. ...
“In the last two months alone, we have seen damage to a cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden, another connecting Germany and Finland, and most recently, a number of cables linking Estonia and Finland. Investigations of all of these cases are still ongoing. ...
At least 11 Baltic cables have been damaged since October 2023 — the most recent being a fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland, reported to have ruptured on Sunday. Although cable operators note that subsea cable damage is commonplace, the frequency and concentration of incidents in the Baltic heightened suspicions that damage might have been deliberate.
There also are fears that Russia could target cables as part of a wider campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare” to destabilize European nations helping Ukraine defend itself against the full-scale invasion that Moscow has been pursuing since 2022. ...
Several Western intelligence officials ... that recent damage was most likely accidental, seemingly caused by anchors being dragged by ships that were poorly maintained and poorly crewed. ... The official said Russian cables were also severed. ..."
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