Damage to Russian Baltic Sea Telecoms Cable Caused by External Impact

An underwater Russian Baltic Sea telecoms cable was damaged by an “external impact,” according to a statement from Russia’s state-owned Rostelecom company reported by TASS news agency on Saturday.

“Rostelecom’s submarine cable was damaged in the Baltic Sea as a result of an external impact some time ago,” TASS cited Rostelecom as saying.

Despite the damage, restoration work is currently underway, and Rostelecom assured that the incident has had no impact on subscribers thus far.

No specific details regarding the incident were provided by Rostelecom, and the exact timing of the damage remains unclear. However, Finland’s coast guard reported earlier on Saturday that a Russian vessel was observed repairing a broken cable in the Gulf of Finland.

The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert due to a series of outages affecting various power cables, telecom links, and gas pipelines between the Baltics and Sweden or Finland. These incidents have prompted increased surveillance operations by NATO members in the area.

All of these disruptions are believed to have been caused by ships inadvertently dragging anchors along the seabed, a consequence of heightened tensions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia, however, has denied any involvement in these incidents.

(Source: Reuters – Written by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Additional reporting by Essi Lehto in Helsinki; Editing by Matthew Lewis)