Name: Why NATO Suspects Russia May Be Cutting Underwater Cables in the Baltic Sea
Uploaded: 2025-02-25T04:00:00Z
Duration: 6 min 13 s
Description: WSJ unpacks the allegations of sabotage that have turned the Baltic Sea into the focal point of Moscow’s hybrid war with NATO.

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WSJ unpacks the allegations of sabotage that have turned the Baltic Sea into the focal point of Moscow’s hybrid war with NATO. Photo Illustration: Louisa Naks

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250224/eb38c9ee-5527-4546-ac12-8f98e186905a/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

WSJ unpacks the allegations of sabotage that have turned the Baltic Sea into the focal point of Moscow’s hybrid war with NATO.

Why NATO Suspects Russia May Be Cutting Underwater Cables in the Baltic Sea

Narrator: This map shows the global network of underwater cables, essential for maintaining energy security and the transmission of 99% of the world's data. These cables facilitate trillions of dollars worth of financial transactions a day. Since 2023, at least 10 of these subsea cables have been cut in the Baltic Sea, shown here in red, in what analysts believe have been deliberate acts of sabotage linked to Russia.

Russia's increasing pushing of the envelope when it comes to these sort of hybrid attacks means that the Kremlin is really playing with fire.

Narrator: As a result, NATO is ramping up patrols and increasing its military presence to try to protect this critical underwater infrastructure.

These cables are very, very long. The overall global cable network is 1.4 million kilometers long. You cannot protect all of it at the same time.

Narrator: Accidental brakes that cause faults in the cables are common, which makes them ideal targets for attack.

We see something like 150 to 200 faults happen every year. Some of those can be caused by natural causes, but the vast majority of these faults are caused by accidental human interference. When we look at these current incidents in the Baltic, it's that in some ways they do actually seem to resemble some of these kind of more accidental causes. This is also quite a clever strategy when it comes to the sort of aura of plausible deniability that it creates.

Narrator: But by analyzing the movements of the ships suspected of cutting the subsea cables in the Baltic Sea, it is possible to identify patterns indicating these are attacks. In one such incident, Finnish authorities seized this tanker, the Eagle S, accusing it of deliberately cutting a critical subsea cable.

The Eagle S started this journey in the Russian port of Ust-Luga, which is not too far from the Estonian border, and then continued onwards. Didn't make it especially far, 'cause quite early on in its journey, its anchor was involved in the damage to the Estlink 2 cable, which is important power cable connecting Finland to Estonia. And then continued to bid onwards as well, to then also do quite significant damage to further telecommunications cables.

Narrator: Marine tracking data showed the Eagle S slowing down as it approached the Estlink 2 cable, which suffered a power outage around the time the ship passed across it. Experts say this could signal that the tanker dropped and dragged it's anchor along the sea bed to try to deliberately damage the cable. Images taken of the tanker appear to support that theory.

So here the anchor is still in place, you can see the chain, and on the other side it's missing. Ships do occasionally lose their anchors, for example, during a storm. But it's particularly the nature of the way in which the Eagle S lost its anchor that is quite suspicious. Quite a lot of damage is visible to the hull, where there's even some holes and paint chips, et cetera, which suggest there's quite a lot of force involved.

Narrator: Finnish authorities said they believed the Eagle S was part of Russia's so-called Shadow Fleet, a network of ships Moscow uses to avoid sanctions on oil.

Shadow Fleet ships tend to be quite old, so some even as much is 30, 40 years old. They also tend to not be insured properly and not maintained very well. And it's also often the ownership structures that suggest something is amiss. So if you, for example, look at the Eagle S, it's owned by a company in United Arab Emirates, and this is the only ship that that company owns and the sort of management structure is in India, but it sails under the flag of the Cook Islands. And the Cook Islands are believed to be quite a common flag that ships that are part of the Shadow Fleet use. And then the crew itself is from Georgia and India. So you get this quite diverse and hard to understand ownerships.

Narrator: While these cables are suspected to have been cut by ships linked to Russia, there have also been incidents involving damage to other Baltic cables that have been traced to ships connected to China.

These incidents have sparked quite grave concerns about what this means about a sort of level of potential collaboration that may exist in Russia and China when it comes to some of these hybrid activities. And though Beijing has apologized, it also still continues to argue that these incidents were accidents.

Narrator: Analysts believe the high number of similar incidents could mean the Baltic Sea has become a testing ground for this sort of sabotage technique.

A lot of these cables, they're actually quite easy to find. Maps are available that show their quite specific routes. And on top of that, they're not especially difficult to break.

Narrator: In addition, large parts of these cables lie in legal gray zones. Under UN law, countries have full jurisdiction within 12 nautical miles off their coast, but many pipelines and cables lie in exclusive economic zones or EEZs, which can be up to 200 nautical miles from the shore.

This can create a very muddied environment when it comes to international law and to get accountability. There also appears to be a degree of caution on the side of a lot of NATO countries that have been at the receiving end of this when it comes to calling out, well, Russia, allegedly in this case, for these kind of continuously escalating incidents.

Narrator: The Kremlin claims NATOs concerns are part of a campaign to promote anti-Russian hysteria. Tensions in the Baltic Sea have been escalating since Moscow launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine.

A lot of countries that border the Baltic Sea have been staunch supporters of Ukraine. Russia is also very unhappy about both Sweden and Finland joining NATO.

Narrator: In response, NATO is enhancing its military presence in the Baltic Sea. While analysts warn the sabotage may lead the block to consider its collective defense pacts.

No NATO member state will likely ever invoke Article 4 or 5 over damage to a small number of undersea cables. But what if we're no longer talking about one, two, or three cables, but about 10. Could cutting too many cables at the same time be misinterpreted as a declaration of war by Russia?