The C-Lion1 submarine telecommunications cable is being laid to the bottom of the Baltic Sea by cable ship Ile de Brehat on the shore of Helsinki, Finland, in 2015LEHTIKUVA/Reuters
European governments accused Russia on Tuesday of escalating hybrid attacks on Ukraine’s Western allies, as Baltic nations investigated whether the cutting of two fibre-optic telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea was sabotage.
European officials have not directly accused Russia of destroying the cables. But Germany, Poland and others said it was likely an act of sabotage, while Lithuania’s armed forces boosted surveillance of its waters in response.
“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 and Britain said in a joint statement.
The strongly worded declaration came as European countries probed the complete severing this week of the Baltic cables, one linking Finland and Germany, the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania, recalling previous incidents in the busy waterway.
“If Russia does not stop committing acts of sabotage in Europe, Warsaw will close the rest of its consulates in Poland,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Tuesday after several European foreign ministers met in the Polish capital.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius struck a similar chord at separate talks in Brussels: “No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally.”
“We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage,” Pistorius added.
Moscow has repeatedly denied sabotaging European infrastructure and says such claims are fabricated in an attempt to damage Russian interests as part of an information war waged by the West.
Two European sources said Tuesday’s statement was not a direct response to the cable cuts.
European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell struck a more cautious tone, saying it was too early to point fingers.
“It would be irresponsible from my side to attribute this, let’s say incident or accident or whatever you want to call it, to anyone,” he told a press conference in Brussels.
One cable went out of service on Sunday morning, the other less than 24 hours later on Monday.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority said it had launched a preliminary criminal investigation into the breached cables, which pass through Sweden’s exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea, on suspicion of possible sabotage.
Swedish Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin later told Reuters that the country’s armed forces and coastguard had picked up ship movements that corresponded with the interruption of two telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea.
“We of course take this very seriously against the background of the serious security situation,” he said.
The Swedish navy would be contributing ships equipped for undersea operations, including remotely operated vehicles, to assist in the investigation, the armed forces said separately.
A NATO official said the alliance’s Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure was working closely with allies to help establish the facts.
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said it had also launched a probe into the broken subsea cable but Sweden would be leading the investigations.
In the most prominent Baltic sabotage case, Nord Stream gas pipelines were destroyed in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hastening Europe’s switch to other energy suppliers.
No one has taken responsibility for those blasts. While some Western officials initially blamed Moscow – an interpretation dismissed as “idiotic” by the Kremlin – U.S. and German media have reported that pro-Ukrainian actors may have played a role.
The companies that own the two cables both said it was not yet clear what had caused the outages.
“It’s not a partial damage, it’s full damage,” said a spokesperson for Arelion, owner and operator of the cable linking Lithuania and Sweden. The company later said it had filed a police report.
Cinia, owner of the cable linking Finland and Germany, said it was not possible to say what might have caused the breach until repairs had started. The company has said repairs of this nature typically take 5-15 days.
Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said he had no specific information about who was to blame, adding: “We see increasing activity of especially Russia on our seas, aimed at espionage and possibly even sabotage of our vital infrastructure.”