German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius during a visit to OCCAR-EA, the European Organization for Joint Armaments Co-operation (OCCAR) on November 15, 2024 at North Rhine-Westphalia, Bonn | Photo: Thomas Banneyer/dpa
Brussels (dpa) – Damage to communication cables between new NATO members Finland and Sweden and their alliance partners Germany and Lithuania was likely sabotage, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday.
“No one believes that these cables were cut by mistake,” Pistorius said in Brussels at an EU defence ministers meeting to discuss the different threats facing the European Union.
The damage to the communication cables was reported in the Baltic Sea on Monday by the Finnish state-owned company Cinia.
Cinia announced that a defect had been detected in the C-Lion1 submarine data cable between Finland and Germany, which had interrupted communication links via the cable.
The Finnish Foreign Ministry and the German Foreign Office both said they are “deeply concerned.”
Previous incidents and high tensions between the NATO allies and Russia in the Baltic Sea region raised immediate speculation about the possibility of sabotage.
C-Lion1 runs for 1,173 kilometres from the Finnish capital Helsinki to the German Baltic Sea port city of Rostock, partly following the same route as the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that were destroyed two years ago.
The cable was put into operation in early 2016 and is the only undersea data cable that runs directly from Finland to Central Europe.
Cinia officials said they believe the cable broke at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and was severed by an external force, such as an anchor or a bottom trawl.
At a press conference held by the company, it was stated that the incident occurred in Swedish waters outside the busiest shipping areas.
It is not yet clear how long it will take to fix the problem on C-Lion1.
Additional Context from StratPost
Germany inaugurated a new NATO naval headquarters, called Commander Task Force Baltic (CTF Baltic) in Rostock in October, ignoring Russian objections about the new institution. According to the Russian news agency TASS, the Russian foreign ministry said “This step constitutes a flagrant violation of the letter and the spirit of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany of September 12, 1990 (Two Plus Four Treaty), which binds it not to deploy foreign troops to the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).”
On the occasion of the inauguration in October, dpa reported, Pistorius has made it clear that the Rostock facility is not a new NATO headquarters, and that it is not a violation of the so-called Two-Plus-Four Treaty. The 1990 treaty, which paved the way for divided Germany to reunite at the end of the Cold War, was signed by the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. The new headquarters is responsible for planning maritime operations and drills, as well as leading naval forces assigned by NATO during times of peace, crisis and war. The regional task force is led by Germany but staffed by personnel from 11 other allied nations as well.
It is also worth noting the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline and a telecommunication cable between Finland and Estonia on the night of October 08, 2023, widely suspected to have been caused by a Chinese vessel called the NewNew Polar Bear, which apparently allowed its anchor drag on the seabed, ‘accidentally.’
According to local news media reports, the C-Lion1 cable intersects with submarine telecommunication cable in the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Sweden that was damaged on Sunday.
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