Sabotage? Two European undersea cables cut.

 

One of the undersea cables being laid down in 2015. BBC/Getty.

Two European undersea internet cables have been cut in what may be an act of sabotage. BBC. One of the cables ran between Finland and Germany while the other one ran between Sweden and Lithuania. It is unclear who cut the cables but the European states affected by the incident were quick to blame Russia, as tensions between Russia and NATO countries are extremely high. The cables were in the Baltic Sea and should be repaired in 5 to 15 days. Undersea cables are occasionally damaged by shipping so it is possible this  was a mundane incident, like the 2023 damage to a gas line between Estonia and Finland. However, there was the Nordstream attack in 2022, which was an act of sabotage. 

My Comment:

It would be pretty hilarious if this was just another example of a ship dragging an anchor chain and accidently severing a couple of cables. That happens fairly often and I wouldn't be surprised if that is indeed what happened here. It's certainly a possibility. 

But there is a reason against that. This was two cables that got severed and not where they intercept either. It's possible an anchor dragging could cut both cables, but it seems more likely that it was enemy action at that point. If it was more than two cables that got severed, it would be even more likely. 

On the other hand though, why bother with just a couple of cables if you are a state actor? The severing of these cables didn't really cause any disruption for internet users in the affected countries. There are many other cables that provide internet in the region and without cutting all of them, it serves little purpose. 

If that's the case could this have been a trial run for an actual effort? Training for the divers that would have to pull this off if an actual conflict broke out? It would have to be divers, the Baltic Sea isn't super deep, so deep sea divers could target internet cables. Those divers would want practice at this kind of thing, so perhaps it was a practice run? 

And who could be responsible? Well who you think did it probably has more to do with your priors than anything else. It's just like the Nordstream attack. Western media said Russia did it while Russia said Ukraine or the US did it and there are arguments for both. At least in this case its plausible Russia would have done it because of high tensions and the fact that unlike Nordstream they wouldn't be shooting themselves in the foot. But it's just as likely that this was some kind of false flag that could be blamed on Russia, which I think the original Nordstream attack was. 

Regardless, this wouldn't even be a story if tensions weren't so high with Russia right now. The ATACMS strike has certainly raised the tensions to levels not seen since the 1983 Able Archer exercise that almost started World War  III. I don't  think this particular incident has anything to do with the ATACMS strike though, you can't pull off a major mission like this, it takes time to plan and execute, assuming this was sabotage as well.