Sweden opened a probe Tuesday into “sabotage” in response to cable breaks in the Baltic Sea. The location of the cable cut is in the Baltic Sea, in the Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone, east of the southern tip of Öland, about 700 km from Helsinki. Corrective measures have been initiated and the repair vessel Cable vigilance is getting ready to go on the site.
The case is being led by a prosecutor with the National Public Prosecution Department.
“The preliminary investigation is ongoing and is at an early stage. There is no further information to provide about the investigation at this time,” prosecutor Henrik Söderman said in a statement.
The Swedish Police Authority has requested assistance from the Swedish Coast Guard and the Swedish Armed Forces to gather and share information about the situation at sea. The Coast Guard is in contact with other relevant authorities and provides the support requested.
Among other things, it can help collect and share information about the sea situation, such as ship movements or other phenomena or events at sea.
Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage.”
The Swedish Police urged the public to refer to verified information from authorities and not to “spread unconfirmed information.”
Helsinki-based Cinia reported that a fault has been detected in the Cinia Oy C-Lion1 submarine cable between Finland and Germany at 4:04 a.m. on November 18. Due to the fault, the services provided over the C-Lion1 are down.
The cause of the cable fault is unknown, Cinia said, which has submitted a request for investigation to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on November 19.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has confirmed that it received a request for an investigation from Cinia Oy concerning the broken C-Lion-1 undersea cable in the Baltic Sea, according to sources from the polish of Finland.
Corrective measures have been initiated and the repair vessel Cable vigilance is getting ready to go on the site.
The vessel will leave Calais, France, on Thursday 21 November and the estimate for the completion of the cable repair is by the end of November.
Finland’s international telecommunication connections are routed via multiple routes and the impact of a single cable failure depends on the resilience of the service providers’ connections.
C-Lion1 is a submarine telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany with a length of 1173 km. The submarine cable was launched in 2016 and connects Central European telecommunications networks to Finland and other Nordic countries.
Cinia is a Finnish expert in cybersecurity of digital operating environments and a specialist in critical, high-reliability connections and software.
