The Swedish authorities on Monday boarded a ship in connection with what they described as “gross sabotage” after an undersea communications cable in the Baltic Sea was damaged a day earlier. The ship was escorted to the coast of Sweden for an investigation, the authorities said.
“We suspect that a serious act of sabotage was committed in the Swedish economic zone yesterday,” Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation into the damage, said in a phone interview on Monday.
The authorities have not yet made public the nature or the extent of the damage to the communications cable, which runs between Sweden and Latvia.
The incident follows other suspected sabotage attempts on cables under the Baltic Sea, which has recently become a theater of potential hybrid warfare between NATO and Russia.
Two weeks ago, the Atlantic alliance started a new patrol and surveillance operation to protect critical infrastructure in the sea, on which Russia has coastline, after a number of cables were severed.
The NATO mission, called Baltic Sentry, is intended to help protect underwater cables and pipelines by enhancing the alliance’s presence in the region, said Mark Rutte, the organization’s secretary general. The operation involves frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, submarine satellites, remotely operated vehicles and drones.
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