Finland and Lithuania Report Severed Undersea Data Cables

An undersea data cable connecting Finland and Germany was cut in the early hours of Monday by what was likely an external impact and a nearby link between Lithuania and Sweden was also damaged.

The 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) high-speed fiber optic Helsinki-Rostock link serving data centers is damaged in the Baltic Sea east of southern Sweden, and there’s a high likelihood that it’s completely cut as all of its fiber connections are down, executives of its owner and operator Cinia Oy said at a news conference.

Telia Lietuva AB, Lithuania’s largest communications provider, said an undersea data cable linking the Baltic nation with Sweden’s Gotland island was cut Sunday. The cable was within 10-meter proximity to the Finnish cable.

Finland’s internet access is routed through Sweden while Telia’s Lithuanian clients haven’t been affected with internet redirected through other pathways, it said.

Asked whether there are signs of sabotage or intentional acts, Cinia Chief Executive Ari-Jussi Knaapila said there’s “no way to assess the reason right now.”

“We can say that such damage doesn’t happen without some kind of external impact,” he said, listing ship anchors and bottom trawling as potential causes given there’s little seismic activity in the area.

Determining the cause will require getting a repair ship on site for further investigation, and the departure of OMS Group Sdn’s cable layer vessel Cable Vigilance is already being prepared in Calais, northern France, Cinia said. Such cable repairs typically take between five and 15 days, Cinia said.

“We are deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea,” the German and Finnish foreign ministries said in a joint statement. “The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times.”

There’s been no discernible impact on Finland’s internet access, Samuli Bergstrom, a director at the National Cyber Security Centre of Finland, said at the same news conference.

While Finland remains connected to the internet via multiple cables running through Sweden, the incident is reminiscent of events just over a year ago, when the anchor of a passing ship severed two data cables and a gas pipeline on the seabed of the Gulf of Finland.

Those events, and the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipeline in 2022 have brought threats against critical infrastructure back to the attention of European countries.

Speaking about the incident near Lithuania, Andrius Semeskevicius, head of technologies at the Vilnius-based company, told LRT broadcaster that “it’s obvious this wasn’t an accidental anchor drop.”

Photograph: Reels of submarine fiber optic cable shielding. Photo credit: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images