Sabotage likely cause for cutting of undersea internet cables, says Germany

Germany blamed sabotage for the severing of two undersea internet cables as European leaders condemned Russia for escalating "hybrid attacks" on the West.

Boris Pistorius , the defence minister, said that "nobody believes these cables were accidentally severed" after the Finnish owner of the C-Lion1 data cable announced on Monday that it had been cut.

Mr Pistorius did not explicitly blame Russia for the damage to the cable but referred to the incident as a "hybrid action", a phrase used by Western officials to describe Russia's recent attacks on European infrastructure.

"We must therefore state – without knowing exactly who is behind it – that this is a hybrid action," Mr Pistorius, a member of the chancellor's SPD party, said.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain added in a joint statement: "Moscow's escalating hybrid activities against Nato and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks."

A joint statement by the German and Finnish foreign ministries confirmed that the damaged cable is located in Swedish waters in the Baltic Sea, near the islands of Gotland and Öland.

Both countries have offered to support the investigation into how the cable was severed.

"We are taking this high threat level very, very seriously... as authorities, we are not yet involved, but we have offered to provide assistance," the joint statement said.

Lithuania said it had increased security patrols around its maritime borders and Poland threatened to close all Russian consulates if such attacks continued.

"If Russia does not stop committing acts of sabotage in Europe, Warsaw will close the rest of its consulates in Poland," said Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister.

Elisabeth Braw, a security analyst for the Atlantic Council think tank, said there was "intense action" in the Baltic Sea near the site where the cables had been cut, with German, Swedish and Danish naval vessels appearing to track a Chinese vessel.

"I'm also seeing German and Swedish naval and coast guard vessels nearby," she wrote in a post on X, in response to shipping data posted online which suggested that the Danish navy was pursuing the Chinese vessel.

The Danish navy did not immediately comment when approached by the Telegraph on Tuesday night.

C-Lion1 is the only telecoms data cable connecting Finland and central Europe, stretching 1,100km from the Finnish capital of Helsinki to Rostock, a German port city on the Baltic coast.

It runs partly along the same route as the Nord Stream pipeline that was mysteriously destroyed by unknown saboteurs two years ago.

Speculation has swirled for years over who exactly carried out that attack, with the CIA, Ukrainian specialist divers and Russian spies among the suspects.

It comes after one cybersecurity expert suggested that the damage to the C-Lion1 cable may have been "practice for a larger scale act".

Tapio Frantti, a cybersecurity professor Finland's at Jyvaskyla university told public broadcaster Yle: "If you look at this from the point of view of probability, then yes, this is on the side of intentionality,"

"When a cable breaks, it raises questions as to why it happened [and] who might have a motive to do something like this."

Cinia, a Finnish cybersecurity firm, said it was very unlikely that the C-Lion1 incident was an accident. "These kinds of breaks don't happen in these waters without an outside impact," a spokesman said.

The damage to the cable has reduced the internet capacity of Lithuania by about 20 per cent without affecting consumers, the BBC reported on Tuesday.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine , Moscow has stepped up efforts to sabotage and disrupt key European infrastructure, especially sites used to provide military support to Kyiv.

This includes arson attacks on factories and other facilities in Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom.

Russia is also suspected of planting a number of incendiary devices on planes at warehouses in Birmingham, Leipzig in east Germany, and Warsaw in Poland over the summer.

Earlier this month Polish authorities said the parcel fires were practice runs for a larger sabotage action targeting flights bound for the US and Canada.

Katarzyna Calow-Jaszewska, a Polish prosecutor, said: "The group's goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada."