Yesterday, the Swedish telecom company Telia reported that a telecommunications cable running on the bottom of the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Sweden had been damaged, while the Finnish fiber-optic service provider Cinia announced a similar cable connecting Helsinki with Rostock, Germany, had also been cut.
“For years, various Western countries and NATO intelligence services have been warning against Russian ships that identify and map important submarine cables, including telecommunications connections,” Stanisław Żaryn, advisor to the Polish president and former deputy minister coordinator of special services, posted on X.
According to the technical director of the Swedish company Telia, Andrius Semeskevicius, it is not yet clear whether the cable between Lithuania and Sweden was deliberately severed, reports wPoliticye. However, he did tell Lithuania’s public broadcaster LRT that the problem did not cause any major disruptions in data transmission and customers are using alternative connections.
The cable between Lithuania and Sweden connects on the seabed to the cable between Helsinki and Rostock in Germany, which Cinia reported had been cut about halfway across, south of the island of Öland, in the Swedish exclusive economic zone. The cause of the failure remains unknown.
Żaryn also said on X: “Polish counterintelligence also drew attention to such threats in the Baltic. Today’s two failures in the Baltic Sea basin naturally raise questions about whether we are dealing with Russian sabotage. If it turns out that we are dealing with an operation by Russian services, the West’s reaction must be strong. This would be a new stage in Russia’s hybrid war against the West.”
The Polish advisor emphasized that if the investigation revealed that Russian services were responsible for the failures, the West’s response should be firm:“Russia will now want to test our reactions and will increase pressure on the West, which must be read in the context of preparations for ‘peace’ talks in Ukraine and destabilization of the West in the face of the transfer of power in the US. Worrying times ahead,” he said.
This comes amid a tense time, with current U.S. President Biden granting permission for American-made long-range missiles to be used by Ukraine against Russia, and other major countries doing the same, and incoming President Trump looking for a way to end the war. Finding new reasons to point fingers at Russia for continued aggressions, especially involving NATO countries, makes initiating peace talks all the more difficult.
After the Nord Stream pipeline explosions two years ago, all parties (in the West) sought to immediately blame Putin. Later, a bombshell report implicated the U.S. while yet another investigation pointed to both Ukraine and Poland. Needless to say, after more than two years of investigating, no recent report seems to implicate Russia.
