Swedish Telecom Cable Was Damaged on the Same Time as Baltic Pipeline
The authorities of Sweden reported Tuesday {that a} subsea telecom cable connection to Estonia has been broken, and that the incident occurred at about the identical time because the rupture of the Finnish-Estonian Balticconnector gasoline pipeline.
According to the Estonian ministry of financial system, the injury website was situated about 30 miles off Hiiumaa, an island within the Baltic off the west coast of Estonia. The cable is Swedish-owned, and the operator introduced it again into service inside a matter of days. The description matches the Sweden-Estonia EE-S1 cable, which terminates on Hiiumaa.
The break was solely partial, Sweden’s Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin mentioned Tuesday, and an investigation into the trigger is underneath manner.
“We cannot assess what caused the damage. But what we can say is that this damage has happened at a similar time and in physical proximity . . . to the damage that was previously reported to a gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland, and a telecommunications cable between Estonia and Finland,” he mentioned.
The Balticconnector pipeline and an adjoining telecom cable had been broken within the early hours of October 8. The authorities of Finland mentioned final week that it has trigger to imagine that the rupture was attributable to “external” forces. While the offender has not been recognized, Finnish authorities imagine that it was an actor with a excessive diploma of technical sophistication. “A sabotage of this caliber requires a certain amount of know-how and special equipment. It’s probably not ordinary people who were behind this,” mentioned Timo Kilpeläinen, head of the Finnish NBI’s Investigation Department.
According to the BBC, Finnish sources have quietly indicated that they imagine that the pipeline rupture was an act of “retribution” carried out by Russia. When Finland joined the NATO army alliance in April, ending a long time of neutrality, Russia promised to take “retaliatory steps,” together with “military-technical” measures.
Top picture: Sweden-Estonia EE-S 1 cable and different subsea telecom cables within the Baltic (Telegeography / CC BY SA 4.0)
