Sabotage Suspected After Two European Undersea Internet Cables Are Cut

In this digital era of connectivity, even the slightest drop in internet speeds can result in major inconveniences and troubles for businesses, as well as individuals.

When the entire connection disappears, the effects can be catastrophic.

Unfortunately, this is what happened in the Baltic Sea, as two undersea internet cables were cut within 24 hours.

This includes a cable connecting Finland and Germany and another one that runs between Lithuania and Sweden being cut.

Finland—Germany

According to Finnish telecom company Cinia, which manages the Cinia Oy C-Lion1 submarine cable, a fault was detected in the cable at 4:04 am on November 18, resulting in a drop in services.

In Cinia’s news release reporting the outage, the reason for the disruption is unknown, however, the company submitted a request for investigation to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

The cable was cut around 700 km from Helsinki, Finland’s capital, in the Baltic Sea’s Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone.

Cinia has already deployed corrective measures through a repair vessel that’s preparing to visit the site (scheduled to depart Calais, France, on November 21), with the task expected to be completed by the end of November.

The Cinia Oy C-Lion1 is a 1,173 km-long (729 miles) submarine cable that was launched in 2016 and connects Finland and other Nordic countries to central Europe.

Lithuania—Sweden

Telia Lietuva, a Swedish telecom company, revealed that an undersea cable known as the BCS East-West Interlink (operated by Arelion, a Swedish telecom company), was cut on Sunday morning around 10 am local time.

“The systems immediately reported that we had lost the connection,” Andrius Šemeškevičius, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, told LRT TV.

“Further investigation and clarification took place, and it turned out that it was damaged.”

However, since the company uses three cables to transmit internet connectivity to the country, its systems weren’t completely in the dark. Instead, its bandwidth was reduced by one-third of its capacity, and connectivity was restored after rerouting data traffic.

Šemeškevičius further clarified that the cable in question was quite old and has witnessed several faults, none of which have priorly pointed to sabotage.

These failures are mostly related to shipping, when a ship hooks the cable and breaks it off somewhere in a shallow place, close to the shore, by dropping anchor incorrectly,” said Šemeškevičius.

Sabotage

The fact that both cuts occurred within 24 hours, within a span of 60 to 65 miles, and both cables intersect within an area of only 10 square meters (107 square feet), leads numerous leaders and experts across the European Union (EU) to believe that this isn’t a simple coincidence or incorrectly deployed anchors.

Instead, the incident points to purposeful sabotage, with leaders believing Russian forces are behind the move.

One key reason behind this assessment is the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

In the last two years, both Finland and Sweden joined NATO. This also resulted in both countries breaking decades of non-military alliances to join US forces in the war.

Furthermore, a few weeks ago, intelligence reports from the United States found increased Russian military activity around important undersea cables.

“The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times,” said the Foreign Ministers of Finland and Germany in a joint statement.

“A thorough investigation is underway. Our European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors. Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.

Following this, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, ”Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed. We have to know that, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a hybrid action and we also have to assume that, without knowing by whom yet, that this is sabotage.”

Interestingly, both these countries recently began warning citizens to prepare for the possibility of a war, with Finland launching a website dedicated to the cause. Ahead of this, countries such as Norway and Denmark also began making similar moves.

What do you think about these incidents? Do you think these are accidental cuts or have the cables been purposely sabotaged?

Let us know in the comments below!