Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea cut, Germany and Finland fear sabotage (updated)

Telia AB

18/11/2024 15:52

* 
      One cable cut Sunday, the other on Monday
    

        * 
      Finnish and German governments say are concerned about
security
of critical infrastructure, launch investigation
    

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      Repair of Finland-Germany cable could take up to 15 days
    

  
 (Adds second Baltic Sea cable cut, recasts)
    By Johan Ahlander, Essi Lehto and Andrius Sytas
       HELSINKI/STOCKHOLM/VILNIUS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - 
    Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic
Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, were severed,
raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors, countries and 
companies involved said on Monday.
  
        The episode recalled other incidents in the same
waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious
including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year
and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Sea gas pipelines. 
  
        The 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) cable connecting Helsinki
to the German port of Rostock stopped working around 0200 GMT on
Monday, Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms
company Cinia said. 
  
        A 218-km (135-mile) 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  TELIA.ST  group.    
  
        Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they
were 
  
    "deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable" and were
investigating "an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions
of intentional damage."
  
        Europe's security is threatened by Russia's war against
Ukraine and "hybrid warfare by malicious actors," the joint
statement said, without naming the actors.
  
        "Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is
vital to our security and the resilience of our societies,"
Germany and Finland said. 
  
        A spokesperson for Telia Lietuva, Audrius Stasiulaitis, 
said the other cable was severed as well. It is owned and
operated by Sweden's Arelion to carry Telia Lietuva's internet
traffic, the Telia spokesperson said.
  
        "It is absolutely central that it is clarified why we
currently have two cables in the Baltic Sea that are not
working," Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden's minister of civil defence,
told Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
  
        Located in northern Europe, the Baltic Sea is an active 
commercial shipping route and is ringed by nine countries
including Russia.
  
        The damage to the Finland-Germany cable occurred near
the southern tip of Sweden's Oland Island and could require five
to 15 days to repair, Cinia's chief executive, Ari-Jussi
Knaapila, told a news conference.
    Last year a subsea gas pipeline and several telecoms cables
running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were severely damaged
in an incident raising alarm bells in the region.
    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. 
    In 2022 the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to
Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case
that remains under investigation by German authorities.

 (Reporting by Essi Lehto in Helsinki, Louise Breusch Rasmussen
in Copenhagen, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm and Andrius Sytas in
Vilnius, editing by Terje Solsvik, William Maclean, Leslie Adler
and Cynthia Osterman)
 ((mailto:Louisebreusch.rasmussen@tr.com; +45 21 27 97 79;))