Germany suspects sabotage after undersea internet cables are severed

BERLIN – Germany’s defense minister said the cutting of two undersea internet cables appeared to be deliberate acts of “sabotage.”

The incidents are “a very clear sign that something is going on here,” Boris Pistorius told reporters in Brussels ahead of a meeting of European Union defense ministers Tuesday.

An underwater communications cable connecting Finland and Germany was cut Monday morning, its operator Cinia said, a day after damage was reported to a separate internet cable linking Lithuania and Sweden, also in the Baltic Sea.

While it was still unclear what exactly happened, Pistorius said he suspected that the damage was inflicted deliberately. “We have to state, without knowing exactly who it came from, that this is a hybrid action,” he said, referring to the combined use of conventional military combat with other means of warfare, such as clandestine operations or cyberattacks, to target adversaries.

“We also have to assume … that it is sabotage,” Pistorius added.

Cinia, the Finnish operator of the C-Lion1 cable between Finland and Germany, said the “cut” to its communications cable was detected east of the southern tip of the Swedish island of Öland, in Sweden’s economic zone.

“Yesterday, after 4 a.m. local time in Finland, we noticed an incident in the submarine connection between Finland and Germany,” Taneli Vuorinen, Cinia’s executive vice president, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “The assumption is that the cable is fully cut because all the connections are out at the moment,” he said.

Cinia, which is majority-owned by the Finnish state, is preparing a vessel to repair the damage, Vuorinen said, a process he estimated could take five to 15 days to complete.

Most internet customers are unaffected, but Vuorinen said that some smaller-scale disruption was possible.

Finnish and German foreign ministers said in a joint statement Monday that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable.”

Neither official laid blame for the severed cable. However, they said, “our European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.”

European countries have enhanced protection of critical infrastructure as they confront a rise in sabotage attacks linked to Russia, which they say seeks to stir unease and increase the cost of Western support for Ukraine.

The C-Lion1, which was completed in 2016, is a 730-mile undersea cable that provides telecommunications connectivity between Central Europe and the Nordic countries.

In a separate incident, a 135-mile internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island lost service early Sunday, according to Lithuanian media.

Arelion, which operates the cable, confirmed to The Washington Post in a Tuesday email that damage to its subsea fiber cable was detected Sunday. “We currently do not know what caused it as we have not been able to examine the cable,” wrote spokesman Martin Sjögren. He added that the damage will be repaired in the coming weeks, when weather permits. He said internet traffic was automatically rerouted so most customers would not notice any impact to their connection.

Sjögren said he could not offer further details due to an ongoing investigation by Swedish authorities.

The incidents recall similar events in recent years, including severe damage to an underwater gas pipeline and several telecommunication cables on the bed of the Baltic Sea last year. Investigators identified a Chinese ship, Newnew Polar Bear, as the main suspect in damaging the cables, although it remains unclear whether the damage was intentional.

German prosecutors are also still investigating the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in September 2022. Last year, The Post reported that a senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the Nord Stream bombing.

After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, European countries expelled hundreds of Russian diplomatic staff members or suspected intelligence officers to thwart covert operations, but officials say Moscow has increasingly turned to proxies, criminals or online recruits. Russia has denied any connection to such plots.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that an intensifying hybrid campaign shows the conflict is expanding beyond Ukraine. “Increasingly the front line is moving beyond borders to the Baltic region, to Western Europe and even to the high north,” he said this month. Countries in the Western defense alliance have boosted intelligence sharing to detect sabotage plots.

European foreign ministers meeting in Warsaw on Tuesday accused Russia of “systematically attacking” the continent’s security architecture. “Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks,” the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Britain said in a joint statement.

The ministers met as regional tensions ramped up and as Sweden and Finland offered guidance to citizens on how to survive in wartime. On Tuesday, Ukraine fired at least six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles at a weapons depot in the Bryansk region, the first use of the weapons against a target inside Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Russian officials previously warned that the United States was provoking open war with Russia by permitting the firing of the missiles into its territory.

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Sands reported from London and Francis from Brussels.