Baltic Anchor-Drag Incident May Have Also Hit a Russian Telecom Cable

 

After four serious subsea cable damage incidents in little more than a year, NATO's Baltic members are alert to the risk of possible sabotage attacks sponsored by Russia's intelligence agencies, and have increased their maritime security efforts in response. But Russian cables have also been damaged, according to Russian state communications company Rostelecom. Over the weekend, the cable operator told state news outlet TASS that "some time ago," one of its links under the Baltic was cut "as a result of external influences."

The company confirmed that repairs to the cable are currently under way, and the cable ship Sivuch is on scene for the work. As the location is within the Finnish EEZ, a Finnish Coast Guard patrol vessel is on scene and monitoring the work.

Finnish outlet YLE reports that Rostelecom informed Finland's government of the outage on December 27, two days after the tanker Eagle S dragged anchor and severed multiple Finnish subsea cables in the same area. Eagle S was boarded by Finnish police and detained, and nine members of her crew are under investigation. 

Open-source analyst Auonsson noted that the current AIS location of the repair ship Sivuch aligns with Eagle S' trackline on the day of the casualty voyage - as well as the charted location of the Baltika subsea comms cable, which connects St. Petersburg with the exclave of Kaliningrad. 

The Baltika cable may have also been damaged previously in the Newnew Polar Bear anchor-drag incident in October 2023.