Russia has been accused by European governments of escalating hybrid assaults on Ukraine’s Western allies after two fibre-optic telecommunication cables within the Baltic Sea have been severed.
“Russia is systematically attacking European security architecture,” the international ministers of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland mentioned in a joint assertion.
“Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks.”
The assertion was not made in direct response to the slicing of the cables, Reuters reported, citing two European safety sources.
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Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius mentioned: “No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally.”
He added: “We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage.”
Investigations have been launched into the destruction of the cables earlier this week.
One linked Finland and Germany whereas the opposite linked Sweden and Lithuania.
Russia has repeatedly denied it has sabotaged European infrastructure and has accused the West of constructing such claims to break Russian pursuits.
Investigations launched into potential sabotage
One cable was broken on Sunday morning and the opposite went out of service on Monday.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority has launched a preliminary legal investigation into the broken cables on suspicion of potential sabotage.
The nation’s civil defence minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin mentioned its armed forces and coastguard had picked up ship actions corresponding with the injury to the cables.
“We of course take this very seriously against the background of the serious security situation,” he mentioned.
Finland’s Nationwide Bureau of Investigation mentioned it had additionally launched an investigation, however Sweden would lead the probe.
NATO’s Maritime Centre for the Safety of Essential Undersea Infrastructure was working intently with allies within the investigation, an official mentioned.
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Baltic Sea infrastructure broken
It’s not the primary time such infrastructure has been broken within the Baltic Sea.
In September 2022, three Nord Stream fuel pipelines between Russia and Germany have been destroyed seven months after Moscow invaded Ukraine.
Nobody took duty for the blasts and whereas some Western officers initially blamed Moscow, which the Kremlin denied, US and German media reported pro-Ukrainian actors could have been accountable.
The businesses proudly owning the 2 cables broken earlier this week have mentioned it was not but clear what precipitated the outages.
