Why NATO is deploying on the Baltic Sea

The NATO alliance is ratcheting up its guard against suspected attempts to sabotage underwater energy and data cables and pipelines that crisscross the Baltic.

NATO missioned a French Navy surveillance plane to zoom in on cargo ships using a powerful camera. / Photo: AP
AP

NATO missioned a French Navy surveillance plane to zoom in on cargo ships using a powerful camera. / Photo: AP

With its powerful camera, the French Navy surveillance plane scouring the Baltic Sea zoomed in on a cargo ship ploughing the waters below — closer, closer and closer still until the camera operator could make out details on the vessel's front deck and smoke pouring from its chimney.

The long-range Atlantique 2 aircraft on a new mission for NATO then shifted its high-tech gaze onto another target, and another after that until, after more than five hours on patrol, the plane's array of sensors had scoped out the bulk of the Baltic — from Germany in the west to Estonia in the northeast, bordering Russia.

“We will do everything in our power to make sure that we fight back, that we are able to see what is happening and then take the next steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And our adversaries should know this," NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said this month in announcing a new alliance mission, dubbed “Baltic Sentry,” to protect the underwater infrastructure vital to the economic well-being of Baltic-region nations.

What's under the Baltic?

Power and communications cables and gas pipelines stitch together the nine countries with shores on the Baltic, a relatively shallow and nearly landlocked sea.

A few examples are the 152-kilometre (94-mile) Balticconnector pipeline that carries gas between Finland and Estonia, the high-voltage Baltic Cable connecting the power grids of Sweden and Germany, and the 1,173-kilometre (729-mile) C-Lion1 telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany.

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Why are cables important?

Undersea pipes and cables help power economies, keep houses warm and connect billions of people.

More than 1.3 million kilometres (807,800 miles) of fibre optic cables — more than enough to stretch to the moon and back — span the world's oceans and seas, according to TeleGeography, which tracks and maps the vital communication networks.

The cables are typically the width of a garden hose. But 97 percent of the world’s communications, including trillions of dollars of financial transactions, pass through them each day.

“In the last two months alone, we have seen damage to a cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden, another connecting Germany and Finland, and most recently, a number of cables linking Estonia and Finland. Investigations of all of these cases are still ongoing. But there is reason for grave concern," Rutte said on Jan. 14.

What's causing alarm?

At least 11 Baltic cables have been damaged since October 2023 — the most recent being a fibre optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland, reported to have ruptured on Sunday.

Although cable operators note that subsea cable damage is commonplace, the frequency and concentration of incidents in the Baltic heightened suspicions that damage might have been deliberate.

Western countries accuse Russia and link the suspected sabotage to the Russia-Ukraine war. However, the Kremlin has rejected the accusations.

This is not the first time European and American officials have pinned the blame for sabotage on Russia.

The West accused Russia of a sabotage attack on Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022. But later it was revealed by the German investigation that the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian team.

Berlin even issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver believed to be hiding in Poland.

The Wall Street Journal in its investigative report held Ukraine responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022.

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'Baltic Sentry': NATO launches mission to protect undersea cables

Intelligence agencies' doubts

Several Western intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their work, said that recent damage was most likely accidental, seemingly caused by anchors being dragged by ships that were poorly maintained and poorly crewed.

One senior intelligence official said that ships' logs and mechanical failures with ships' anchors were among “multiple indications” pointing away from Russian sabotage. The official said Russian cables were also severed.

Another Western official, also speaking anonymously to discuss intelligence matters, said Russia sent an intelligence-gathering vessel to the site of one cable rupture to investigate the damage.

The Washington Post first reported on the emerging consensus among US and European security services that maritime accidents likely caused recent damage.

Cable operators advise caution

The European Subsea Cables Association, representing cable owners and operators, noted in November after faults were reported on two Baltic links that, on average, a subsea cable is damaged somewhere in the world every three days.

In northern European waters, the main causes of damage are commercial fishing or ship anchors, it said.

In the fiber-optic cable rupture on Sunday connecting Latvia and Sweden, Swedish authorities detained a Maltese-flagged ship bound for South America with a cargo of fertiliser.

Navibulgar, a Bulgarian company that owns the Vezhen, said any damage was unintentional and that the ship's crew discovered while navigating in extremely bad weather that its left anchor appeared to have dragged on the seabed.

NATO's ‘Baltic Sentry’ mission

The alliance is deploying warships, maritime patrol aircraft and naval drones for the mission to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.”

Aboard the French Navy surveillance flight, the 14-member crew cross-checked ships they spotted from the air against lists of vessels they had been ordered to watch for.

“If we witness some suspicious activities from ships as sea – for example, ships at very low speed or at anchorage in a position that they shouldn’t be at this time – so this is something we can see,” said the flight commander, Lt. Alban, whose surname was withheld by the French military for security reasons.

“We can have a very close look with our sensors to see what is happening.”

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