Undersea cables in Baltic Sea cut, Germany and Finland fear sabotage

Experts say an undersea fibre optic cable between Germany and Finland has stopped working and might have been deliberately cut off by an unknown party.

The 1 200km  C-Lion1 submarine telecommunications cable which is more than one kilometre under the Baltic Sea from Helsinki to the German port of Rostock went offline at 2am on Monday, Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia said.

An ‘act of sabotage’

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Tuesday said the severing of two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea must be seen as an “act of sabotage, although it is still unclear who is responsible.”

“No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally. I also don’t want to believe in versions that these were anchors that accidentally caused damage over these cables,” Pistorius said before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels, AFP reported.

“Therefore we have to state, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a ‘hybrid’ action. And we also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage.”

A 218-km internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania’s Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden’s Telia Company group.

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Concerns about ‘severed undersea cable’

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage.”

Microsoft cables

Earlier this year, the failure of Microsoft undersea cables near Côte d’Ivoire was behind the problems, which impacted Vodacom customers.

Microsoft said most of its reports of poor connection came from South Africa and the United Kingdom (UK).

The tech giant at the time said in addition to these cable impacts, “the ongoing cable cuts in the Red Sea — EIG, Seacom, AAE-1 — were also impacting capacity on the East Coast of Africa”, with regards to Microsoft Azure.

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