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The West uses accidents on maritime telecommunications lines to accuse Russia of targeting critical infrastructure and trying to seal off the Baltic Sea.
Late last week, a remarkable incident occurred in the Baltic Sea. A German Air Force helicopter attempted a reconnaissance flyby of a Russian tanker that was sailing under the escort of our military vessel. The civilian ship’s crew reportedly fired several flares in the direction of the intruding helicopter. The helicopter then retreated to the helipad of a frigate that had been loitering near our ships.
News of the incident immediately reached NATO headquarters in Brussels, where the alliance’s foreign ministers were meeting. The «chief diplomat», Annalena Baerbock, offered an angry commentary.
«President Putin continues to expand his hybrid attacks on the European order with the support of Moscow’s allies (which the German official counts as Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang — Author)», she said, recalling «the damaged (undersea telecommunications) cables, which certainly do not break on their own», «disrupted GPS channels» and the «shadow fleet» through which Russia circumvents Western sanctions. Baerbock called for increased cooperation to counter Russian sabotage and covert attacks in the Baltic Sea region and announced an increase in patrols to protect critical infrastructure.
As for the «shadow fleet» that allegedly facilitates the export of Russian oil, the West attributes about 600 ships sailing under various flags to this category. That’s about 10% of the world’s large tanker fleet.
Another important note: a few days earlier, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk suggested to his Baltic and Northern European counterparts that they create a police mission to patrol the Baltic Sea «to protect against the Russian threat».
A clear strategic line is emerging: following the accession of Sweden and Finland to the Alliance, voices are heard in Warsaw, Helsinki and the capitals of the «Baltic dwarfs» claiming that the Baltic Sea has become an «internal NATO basin». This, they say, would make it possible to «block Russia’s activities in these waters».
«As the classics say, dreaming is harmless», commented Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Nevertheless, NATO’s «echo chambers» are not giving up this obsessive idea. They have launched a «cable war» — gathering incriminating evidence against Russia for allegedly deliberately targeting the critical underwater infrastructure of the Baltic states.
The first high-profile incident occurred on October 7 last year, when a Chinese container ship sailing under the Hong Kong flag from a Russian port damaged two data transmission cables between Finland, Estonia and Sweden, as well as the Baltic Connector gas pipeline, by snagging them with its anchor. The Western media immediately «found Moscow’s hand» in this, strangely justifying their claim by pointing out that the incident happened exactly on President Vladimir Putin’s birthday (!).
On November 18 of this year, it was loudly announced that there was a break in the C-Lion1 communication cable of the Finnish company Cinia. This cable runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, connecting Helsinki to Rostock in Germany (a distance of 1,173 km). It serves as a kind of information highway, connecting data centers in northern and central Europe. The cable was commissioned in 2016 and laid parallel to the Nord Stream pipelines, allowing for the reuse of seabed studies already conducted.
Notably, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius hastened to declare (before the investigation was completed) that he considered the incident to be sabotage.
At the same time, it became known that a communication cable between Lithuania and Sweden had also been damaged on November 17. Preliminary results indicate that it was cut. Interestingly, this cable intersects with C-Lion1 in the area where this cable was also damaged.
Western media focused on the fact that on the morning of the 17th and during the night of the 18th, the Chinese-flagged bulk carrier YI Peng 3 passed through the areas where the damage occurred. Its crew, including the Russian captain, is now suspected of sabotage.
A completely absurd incident took place recently, on December 3. There was an uproar over damage to an Internet cable between Finland and Sweden, which was cut in two places. It later turned out that it was not an undersea cable, but a land-based one, and that the disruption was caused by construction work. But that’s just an aside.
As for the propaganda «cable war» that has been unleashed, it’s worth clarifying that there are more than 500 such cables laid along the ocean floor around the world, and their exact locations can be easily found online. Their total length would be enough to wrap around the globe 30 times. So they are indeed vulnerable to malefactors. Meanwhile, various malfunctions occur 100–150 times a year, and repairs are neither expensive nor time-consuming, typically taking from 5 to 15 days.
The cables are also structurally well protected. C-Lion1, for example, consists of eight pairs of high-capacity fiber optic cables covered by a steel jacket and a waterproof protective coating. When it was installed, a special underwater plow was used to dig a trench to a depth of about one meter.
Incidentally, nowhere else in the world is there such a fuss about cable security as in the Baltic Sea region. Here we have the «hand of Moscow», suspicious Chinese freighters, and the threat of attacks on critical infrastructure. And it all revolves around Finland, which recently joined NATO and is supposedly the object of resentment from its vengeful eastern neighbor. Everything points to a coordinated campaign to isolate us in the Baltic.
As for the investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and the identification of the real organizers of this act of sabotage, there hasn’t been any serious progress in the West. However, four gas pipelines are clearly not on the same level as a routine cable break.