‘Sabotage’ suspected after two Baltic Sea cables cut

Sweden’s Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin told AFP in a written statement it was “crucial to clarify why we currently have two cables in the Baltic Sea that are not working”.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius also said the two severed cables were a “clear sign that something is going on”.
“Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed,” Pistorius said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels.
“We have to say, without knowing exactly who it came from, that this is a hybrid action. We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it was sabotage,” he said.
Bohlin said Swedish authorities were looking into ships sailing in the area at the time.
“The Swedish armed forces and coast guard have picked up ship movements that coincide in time and space with the interruptions that occurred,” he told television TV4.
Swedish public broadcaster SVT and several Finnish media meanwhile reported that two Danish navy ships shadowed a Chinese cargo vessel, the Yi Peng 3, as it sailed out of the Baltic Sea early Tuesday after the cables were severed.
Citing unidentified sources, they said several countries’ authorities considered the vessel to be of interest in the investigation.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been repeated cases highlighting the mounting tensions in the Baltic region.
In September 2022, a series of underwater blasts ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe.
In October 2023, an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia had to be closed after it was damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship.
Finland has stepped up surveillance of incidents in the Baltic Sea since the outbreak of war between neighbouring Russia and Ukraine.
Last month, NATO opened a new naval base in Rostock to coordinate the forces of the alliance’s members in the Baltic Sea.
Russia summoned the German ambassador to Moscow after the inauguration to protest against the new naval command centre.
Moscow called the centre a “blatant breach” of the treaty on the reunification of Germany in 1990 that said no foreign armed forces would be deployed in the area, a claim Berlin denied.