Seabed Cable Damaged in Latest Baltic CUI Incident

In a statement reported by Finnish broadcaster Yle, Arto Pahkin – operations manager for Fingrid, Finland’s energy supply operator – said “The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. However, we are examining the situation as a whole and will provide further information once the cause is identified.”

In a further statement released on 26 December, Fingrid said electricity transmission between the two countries along the EstLink2 cable was disconnected, with the fault located within the cable. “Authorities are investigating the sequence of events that led to the damage to the submarine cable,” the statement added.

On 25 December, Finnish prime minister Petteri Orpo wrote, on social media platform X, “The EstLink2 electricity transmission connection between Finland and Estonia has been disconnected this afternoon. Authorities are still on standby over Christmas and are investigating the matter.”

Some media reports suggested that more than one cable was damaged in the incident.

This latest incident is the fourth reported high-profile occurrence of damage to critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) in the Baltic Sea since September 2022.

In September 2022, two Nordstream gas pipelines off Denmark’s Bornholm island were ruptured by explosions. In October 2023, the BalticConnector gas pipeline running between Estonia and Finland was damaged, along with a nearby communications cable, reportedly by a ship’s anchor dragging across them. In November 2023, two seabed cables – the Arelion internet cable linking Sweden’s Gotland island to Lithuania, and the C-Lion 1 telecommunications cable connecting Helsinki, Finland to Rostock, Germany – were cut, with damage by a ship’s anchor dragging reported again as a possible cause. The C-Lion 1 cable incident occurred just south of Sweden’s Oland island.

Following the latest incident, Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said, in a statement on 26 December, that “Damage to [CUI] has become so frequent that it is difficult to believe this is accidental or merely poor seamanship. We must understand that damage to submarine infrastructure has become more systematic and thus must be regarded as attacks against our vital structures.”

Alongside co-operating with Finland, Tsahkna added “We are also in touch with our other allies and partners to co-ordinate international co-operation.”

Tsahkna noted too that Estonia would act to counter Baltic Sea security threats. “If there is a threat to CUI in our region, there will also be a response,” he wrote on X, on 27 December. On 27 December, the Estonian Navy announced that the patrol boat Raju had been deployed to protect the EstLink1 cable.

Naval News Comment

CUI security – especially that of seabed cables and sensors – has been a long-standing NATO concern. The incidents that have occurred in the Baltic Sea since September 2022 have demonstrated that the risk is real, and that an emerging threat is now an enduring one.

These Baltic CUI incidents are significant for several reasons.

First, the Baltic Sea is a primary region in which the Russo-Ukraine war, which broke out in February 2022, is spilling over as a wider Euro-Atlantic security threat. It should be noted too that, in its war in Ukraine, Russia has been directly targeting Ukraine’s civil power infrastructure.

Second, the Baltic is now a ‘strategic sea’ for Russia and NATO alike. Russia needs maritime access to Kaliningrad and St Petersburg. NATO needs to support and secure not only Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as its three Baltic State allies but also now Finland and Sweden as new NATO members.

Third, the CUI network that supports NATO states economically in the Baltic Sea is significant. The Baltic Sea is extremely busy in shipping terms, with relatively shallow waters. In the North Atlantic, CUI nodes are less numerous and more dispersed, shipping lanes are less frequent, and the waters are much deeper: so, targeting CUI there is more challenging, with more specific capabilities required. In the Baltic, however, the density of the CUI network and of shipping traffic offers plausible deniability for rogue actors seeking to use ‘dark fleets’ to target CUI in hybrid, asymmetric operations.

In the North Atlantic, it is nonetheless worth highlighting two possible CUI incidents. In November 2021, it was reported that an underwater environmental sensor network off Lofoten, Norway – a network whose cables can detect surface and sub-surface vessel movement, as well as marine life – suffered a rupture. In January 2022, fibre-optic cables connecting Norway’s Svalbard island to the Norwegian mainland were damaged.

Svalbard and Lofoten are located respectively at the top and bottom ends of the Bear Island Gap, a maritime chokepoint dividing the Barents and Norwegian seas and thus being a location for significant submarine activity.

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