Internet cable between NATO states damaged

A Swedish minister was quick to cry sabotage but at least one of the ruptures has proven to be an accident

A Swedish minister has suggested that his country’s telecommunications infrastructure may have been sabotaged after reports emerged of a fiber-optic cable being breached in two separate areas of southern Finland. However, Finnish telecom company Elisa later said at least one of the ruptures had been accidentally caused by an excavator.

Over the past year, several similar incidents have happened in the area, with officials in Nordic and Baltic states usually pointing the finger at Russia. However, no evidence has been presented to support such an accusation, with some of the ruptures later proving unintentional.

The two separate breaks, both on Finnish soil, were reported by the media on Tuesday. According to the cable operator, one of the cuts on the line connecting the two Nordic nations was repaired overnight, with work on the other one still underway. The operator of the line, Global Connect, has estimated that approximately 6,000 households and 100 businesses in Finland lost internet connection at one point on Monday. The fault apparently did not affect Swedes.

Swedish media outlets, including public broadcaster SVT and Aftonbladet newspaper, originally claimed that Finish police had suspected criminality in the incident. However, law enforcement officials clarified later on Tuesday that “contrary to media reports, the Finnish police have no ongoing criminal investigation into the damage to the fiber optic cable between Finland and Sweden.”

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However, speaking to Aftonbladet, Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin maintained that “due to the circumstances surrounding what happened, sabotage is suspected.”

Meanwhile, Jaakko Wallenius, director of safety at Elisa, told Helsingin Sanomat that it had been established that one of the ruptures was accidentally caused by an excavator, with the person responsible reporting the incident. Yle media outlet quoted the company representative as calling the situation a “very ordinary accident” given that a “lot of fiber construction is being done.”

Niklas Ekstrom, Global Connect’s communications manager, also confirmed that one of the breaches was attributable to construction work, with the cause of the other fault currently being looked into, as reported by the Associated Press.

Last month, two fiber-optic undersea cables - the BCS East-West-Interlink, which connects Lithuania to Sweden, and the C-Lion, linking Finland and Germany, - were damaged in rapid succession in the Baltic Sea.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was quick to suggest that the ruptures were an act of “sabotage.”

The Financial Times, citing an anonymous source, later alleged that a Chinese-registered merchant vessel en route from Russia to Egypt had come under suspicion.