Russia suspected in sabotage of undersea cables

(by Bojan Pancevski, The Wall Street Journal) – [European nations are accusing Russia of orchestrating a massive sabotage strike on Ukraine’s Western allies after two underwater fiber-optic cables were cut in the Baltic Sea.

The 135-mile-long internet cable connecting Sweden to Lithuania was cut on Sunday, and the 700-mile-long telecommunications cable linking Finland to Germany was sabotaged the following day, according to government officials.]

Swedish police started a preliminary sabotage investigation on Tuesday with assistance from the coast guard and the armed forces, the country’s police authority said.

Western officials said there are indications that Russia was behind the incidents, [but noted they] were similar to other operations resulting from Moscow’s escalating hybrid warfare against NATO countries in Europe.

“Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally cut off,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters. “Therefore we must conclude—without yet knowing specifically who was behind it—that this is a hybrid operation.”

His statement was echoed by Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen and her German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock. “Our European security is not only threatened by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine but also by the hybrid warfare of malicious actors,” the two ministers said in a statement. They stopped short of pointing the finger at Moscow, but officials from both countries said Russia was the prime suspect, without revealing any evidence for this suspicion.

The preliminary investigation involving Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Germany and other nations found that the cables were likely cut in Swedish economic waters, where the two cables intersect in a relatively small area, according to two people familiar with the findings.

The damage was near-certain to be a result of human interference rather than caused by any natural phenomena, these people said.

Since the launch of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has been accused by Western officials of waging a shadow war on European soil. They allege Russia was behind a plot to place incendiary devices on airplanes, instigated arson attacks in the U.K. and the Czech Republic, and ordered sabotage operations on military and industrial installations in Germany.

It is also accused of orchestrating attacks on pipelines and data cables in the Baltic and the Arctic, and tampering with water supplies in Sweden and Finland. U.S. and German intelligence officials said Russian operatives plotted to kill the chief executive of Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest armaments manufacturer that supplies Ukraine. …

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday denied Russia’s involvement, saying it was “quite absurd” to point the finger at Russia in the absence of evidence.

Yi Peng 3, a Chinese-registered bulk carrier [cargo ship], sailed close to the damaged cables around the time they were cut, publicly available tracking data from the MarineTraffic website shows. The ship was approached by Danish navy vessels, and a Danish-registered pilot vessel in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden.

In October last year, a Chinese-registered cargo container ship called Newnew Polar Bear cut the Baltic connector gas pipeline and a telecommunication cable connecting Finland and Estonia with its anchor, according to people familiar with the investigation into the case. Some officials briefed on the investigation said that Russian sailors were aboard the Chinese ship at the time of the incident.

Two of the countries affected by the latest incidents, Sweden and Finland, both joined NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) this year after [giving up] a longstanding policy of military neutrality due to Russia’s new aggressive posture in Europe.

The disruption of the submarine cables has so far caused only minor problems for the countries involved, according to the cable operators and authorities.

“We prepare for events like this, and there are multiple cables and routes for contingency, so the net result of this is only slower service for some providers,” a senior Finnish official said.

The cable connecting Finland’s capital, Helsinki, with the German Baltic port of Rostock is known as C-Lion1, and it links Central European telecommunications networks to Finland and other Nordic countries, operator Cinia said Tuesday. …

A repair vessel will be dispatched imminently, and the damage will take up to 15 days to repair, the company said.

The telecommunications link between Sweden and Lithuania, operated by the Swedish firm Arelion, is used by Lithuanian telecom company Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden’s Telia. Internet bandwidth was reduced by two-thirds in the aftermath of the incident, but Telia Lietuva managed to bypass the faulty cable by using other routes, it said. …

European governments have struggled to react to, or even clearly attribute, the clandestine threats in the past two years. This is partly because Russia has in most cases maintained plausible deniability by using proxies, some of whom were people recruited on social media who had no knowledge of who they were working for.

When a Chinese cargo container ship with Russian crew on board severed a gas pipeline and a data cable in October last year, the ship’s owners said it was an accident.

A Russian fishing trawler severed a key data cable off the coast of Norway’s northernmost territory Svalbard shortly before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The ship’s captain was questioned by Norwegian authorities and said that he had steered his vessel multiple times across the cable because there was a stock of fish in the area.

But while some governments, including that of Germany, have been reluctant to clearly attribute the attacks, others, including Britain and Poland, are becoming more determined to point the finger at Russia.

The Kremlin’s spy services are on a “sustained mission to generate mayhem” on Europe’s streets by orchestrating “arson, sabotage” and other “dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness,” warned Ken McCallum, the head of U.K. domestic spy agency MI5*, in October. [Britain’s M15 is similar to our FBI]

Published at wsj .com on November 20, 2024. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission.