A data cable across Baltic Sea between Finland and Germany has broken and the cause is unknown

[highplainsdem]

Source: AP

HELSINKI (AP) — A submarine data communications cable across the Baltic Sea between Finland and Germany has broken and the cause for the disruption is being investigated, Finnish authorities said Monday.

The Finnish state-controlled data services provider, Cinia, said “a fault” was detected Monday in the C-Lion1 cable that runs nearly 1.200 kilometers (746 miles) from the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the German port city of Rostock.

Cinia said Finland’s international data and telecommunications connections are secured by running them through several routes, and the effects of a single cable failure would depend on the security level of service providers’ connections.

The C-Lion1, commissioned in 2016, is Finland’s only data communications cable that runs from the Nordic country directly to central Europe, according to Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/finland-germany-data-communications-cable-9b231aa47501545690a26a442fe106a5

[NotHardly]

1. One word ... Russia

[Irish_Dem]

2. My read of it too.

Putin is at war with the west and is winning.
So he will double down.

[ancianita]

11. The Atlantic Council agrees. What Russia did to Ukraine is what it will do to the EU.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/concerns-grow-over-possible-russian-sabotage-of-undersea-cables/

The world’s critical undersea infrastructure is largely unguarded and its exact positions are available in the public domain, creating a potentially tempting target for the Kremlin. Western intelligence officials believe Russia’s efforts to monitor and build up technical capability to access this vast undersea infrastructure are expanding and are currently spread among a number of different branches of the country’s military and security services, including the Russian Navy and the Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research (GUGI).

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began just over two and a half years ago, reports of suspicious Russian activity close to undersea cables have been mounting. This threat to underwater infrastructure is viewed as one of the many tools in a far broader Kremlin toolbox of hybrid warfare methods against the West.

In September 2024, CIA and MI6 chiefs accused Russia of engaging in a “reckless campaign of sabotage” across Europe. Alleged recent Russian attacks on communications systems have included disruption to the Global Positioning System (GPS) that affected thousands of civilian passenger flights in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and eastern Mediterranean regions.

[Ocelot II]

3. I can't imagine how such a thing could have happened!

[Dennis Donovan]

4. Data cable failures involving NATO countries - suspicious, IMO. n/t

[highplainsdem]

5. Tweet from Anton Gerashchenko of Ukraine:

Link to tweet

Anton Gerashchenko
@Gerashchenko_en
Meanwhile, several days ago, information appeared that Russia may be planning to step up its sabotage campaign by damaging undersea Internet cables.

Moscow’s special services have been hard at work in Western countries. We have seen numerous examples of their operations in recent months: from attempts to send explosives via DHL, to hacking European satellites and transmitting Russian propaganda.

The recent activity and rhetoric of Kremlin officials suggests another special op may be in the works.

Back in September, US intelligence detected increased Russian military activity around key undersea cables. CNN’s sources suspected that Russia was planning to sabotage “critical communications infrastructure.”

Everything was silent for two months, but this week, several things happened in quick succession that should set off warning bells:

▪️Newsweek broke the story that a Russian spy ship has been “loitering” off the coasts of Norway for about a month. Naval analysts think the ship is likely trying to locate undersea cables.

▪️Nikolai Patrushev, key aide to Vladimir Putin, issued an unsubstantiated warning that US and UK had the capacity and were planning to attack undersea fiber optic cables.

▪️On Friday, an internal communique from the Russian Central Bank was leaked in the media. The document asks the CB’s subsidiaries to prepare for an exercise " disconnecting access to the foreign segment of the 'Internet' network in certain regions."

It increasingly looks like a classic Russian “false flag” operation is in the works. They pre-emptively blame Western countries for plotting to cut the cables, while making overt preparations for doing it themselves.

[dalton99a]

7. +1

[Ocelot II]

9. Maybe they'd be safer routing comms mostly on land through Sweden and Denmark.

I don't know how those things work, though, so could they do it that way?

[BadgerKid]

6. (user-removed)

[BadgerKid]

8. Newsweek 11/12/24: Russia Issues Ominous Warning About Undersea Internet Cables

An ally of Vladimir Putin has accused the U.S. and the U.K. of intending to sabotage underwater internet cables and planning to destabilize the maritime energy trade.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin-1984215

[LudwigPastorius]

10. "cause unknown"

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Related: Russian spy ship had to be escorted out of Irish Sea away from underwater data cable a day or two ago.nt

[riversedge]

13. Image of cable between Sweeden and Germany.....

Germany and Finland ‘deeply concerned’ about severed undersea cable
Foreign ministers do not rule out sabotage as part of Russia’s ‘hybrid warfare’


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”..............



https://www.ft.com/content/a160dccd-a946-4238-aba5-e6649a587296

https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/ftcms%3A09b282f4-7b92-4829-a643-ed55a98fa7a6?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=2



https://www.ft.com/content/a160dccd-a946-4238-aba5-e6649a587296



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https://www.ft.com/content/a160dccd-a946-4238-aba5-e6649a587296

Finnish foreign minister Elina Valtonen, left, and her German counterpart Annalena Baerbock in June. The pair issued a joint statement on Monday in which they warned of ‘hybrid warfare by malicious actors’ © Lehtikuva/AFP/Getty Images

[usonian]

14. I just posted an update to another thread. I miss some posts when I don't visit the home page in a while.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1095&pid=35366



Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted, sparking warnings of possible ‘hybrid warfare’
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/europe/undersea-cable-disrupted-germany-finland-intl/index.html

[peregrinus]

15. Do Russian naval vessels travel those waters?

Probably a dumb question. But it looks like Denmark creates a log jam through which any Russian ships would have to pass