Since then, Baltic Sea sabotage has proliferated, hitting telecom, gas and power links connecting Sweden, Finland, Germany, Latvia and Estonia. Just a few weeks ago, a communications cable linking Berlin and Helsinki was again damaged off the Swedish coast.
It’s a simple operation to pull off.
To start, the costs are extraordinarily low. “Potentially, it’s just bribing a captain to lower the anchor,” said Christian Bueger, an international relations professor and maritime security expert at the University of Copenhagen. “That’s really cheap if you’re thinking about military-style, security operations.”
The target is also easily within reach of a ship’s anchor. The Baltic Sea is only 52 meters deep on average, while the Gulf of Finland is even shallower at 38 meters. Compare that to the Mediterranean Sea at 1,500 meters.
Then, the cables themselves are simple to cut.
Subsea data cables — which carry the world’s emails, WhatsApps and Zoom meetings — are minuscule, roughly an arm’s thickness wide, according to Volker Wendt, secretary-general of the Europacable trade body.