The Cable Wars Continue

low risk, low reward...but reward nonetheless

Whatever is going on in the Baltic is, if nothing else, strange. It is a form of sabotage as old as the Spanish-American War, yet in some circles continues to be looked at as if it is some “gray-zone/hybrid warfare” invention. It is no such thing. It is good old fashioned sabotage, but with a twist.

The Baltic Sea is, in essence, a NATO lake, but at its eastern end Russia has her ports. All NATO nations are contributing to Ukraine’s fight against Russia, and there is very little Russia can do about that unless it wants a wider war.

Russia wants to do something, and this is something. Having a series of merchant ships literally troll their anchor, and then figuratively troll NATO in their own lake is, well, kind of genius.

A fair bit of plausible deniability. Some damage, and it is something.

Swedish authorities seized the Vezhen, sailing under the flag of Malta and registered with a Bulgarian shipping company, on Sunday over suspected sabotage of an underwater cable.

Sweden’s coast guard boarded and seized the ship they allege damaged the underwater fibre optic cable between Latvia and Sweden in the Baltic Sea, in yet another incident sparking fresh fears of sabotage.

After the cable's operator said there was reason to believe the damage may have been caused by external influence, the Swedish prosecutors launched a preliminary investigation into the suspected sabotage and seized the ship believed to have been behind it.

The seized vessel is reported to be the Vezhen — a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier registered to a Bulgarian shipping company — with eight Bulgarian officers and nine sailors from Myanmar on board.

Local media say that two days before the incident, it left the Russian port of Ust-Luga and sailed towards South America loaded with fertilisers.

That’s the latest in what looks like a once-a-month series of events.

Early in November two cables were severed in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Lithuania and another between Germany and Finland immediately alarming member states and NATO concerned about sabotage.

‘The Russians are carrying out a program they have had for decades. It's called the Russian Undersea Research Program, which is a euphemism for a paramilitary structure, very well-funded, that is mapping out all of our cables and our energy pipelines”, says Appathurai.

‘It has so-called research ships. They have little submarines underneath. They have unmanned, uncrewed, remotely operated vehicles they have divers and explosives’, he tells Euronews’ Europe Conversation.

In Germany, Finland, the governments were quick to lay blame at potential saboteurs for the apparent attacks on the cables.

“No one believes that the cables were accidentally damaged. I also don’t want to believe that the ships’ anchors caused the damage by accident,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorious.

Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said Nato needed to do a lot more to defend Western critical infrastructure.

Sweden said an investigation into the cables is now underway.

"Russia is systematically attacking European security architecture”, said a joint statement from foreign ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

"Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and E.U. countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks”, it read.

Ninety per cent of the world’s digital communications data passes through the undersea cables. And around €10 trillion in financial transactions pass through daily. In addition to cables, critical undersea infrastructure also includes electricity connectors and pipelines supplying oil and gas.

No one is going to blockade Russian ports, but something has to be done. NATO has, to its credit, stepped up to “figure it out” and the more I think about it, the more the AI angle makes sense.

The Baltic Sentry operation is backed up by AI run out of NATO’s new Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure in the UK.

“Speed is of most importance here. We need to react very fast,” the head of NATO maritime operations there, Capt. Niels Markussen, told CNN last week.

According to Markussen, a Danish naval captain, the team is building “patterns of life” in the Baltic, watching for anomalies, like ships frequently changing direction, loitering or slowing near critical cabling. “We have this picture of the undersea infrastructure, we compare that with the picture of the surface,” he explained.

With the combined resources of warships, AI, high-tech tracking data and F-35 stealth fighter jets to call on, Markussen says reaction time to suspicious behavior will be “within a half an hour or an hour” – a far cry from the 17 hours for which one ship suspected of sabotage dragged its anchor last year.

Of course, our friend Sal Mercogliano has the unbeaten summary.

The Baltic is a busy place…but it is a confined space in relative terms. There is a lot of tracking data…but only so many ways to effectively looks for issues.

The Russians are learning, the PRC is learning, and NATO is learning.

While we are at peace, we need to find some way to disincentivize this warm-peace sabotage, but until then—this is actually great training. Make no mistake, should a large war come, the seabed lines of communication will be part of it.