Two subsea communications cables in the Baltic Sea were severed this week, raising suspicions of sabotage.
A 218-km internet link between Lithuania and Sweden's Gotland Island went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania's Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden's Telia Company. Not long after that, the 1,200-kilometre cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working around 0200 GMT on Monday, Finnish company Cinia said. The damage to the Finland-Germany cable occurred near the southern tip of Sweden's Öland Island and could require five to fifteen days to repair, Cinia's chief executive, Ari-Jussi Knaapila, told at a news conference.
The episode recalled other incidents in the same waterway, like the damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022. These destroyed the pipelines linking Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. This case remains under investigation by German authorities.
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. Swedish authorities are investigating the case.
