The Swedish government says its undersea telecoms cable with Estonia was damaged at roughly the same time as a gas pipeline and cable linking Finland and Estonia.
Separately, Finnish investigators said they had identified vessels operating in the area where the damage to the pipeline and cable occurred on Oct. 8, naming two of them, a Russian-flagged ship and a Chinese-owned vessel.
The damage to the Swedish-Estonian cable was sustained outside Sweden's territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, the country’s civil defense minister, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said. The cable has continued to function since then.
Europe and NATO have become increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure around and under the Baltic Sea.
The latest incidents follow explosions in September 2022 that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea and cut Europe’s supply of Russian gas.
Finland said on Oct. 8 that the Baltic connector subsea gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia had been damaged in what may have been a deliberate act.
Finnish authorities said last week that “external marks” had been found on the seabed beside the damaged pipeline and were reviewing vessel traffic in the area at the time of the rupture, according to Reuters.
