Cinia, the Finnish state operator of the 1,200km C-Lion1 fibre optic cable between Helsinki in Finland and Rostock in Germany, said it had been cut early on Monday morning in the Baltic Sea close to Sweden and was almost certainly the result of an “external force”.
Separately, Swedish telecoms operator Telia said that a communications cable between Sweden and Lithuania was damaged on Sunday morning, almost 24 hours before the Finnish-German severing.
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”.
Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors”, the joint statement said, without naming the actors.
In 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case that remains under investigation by German authorities.
