Finnish-German Submarine Cable Damaged Near Nord Stream Route

The Finnish company Cinia reported problems with its communication cable running under the Baltic Sea. The Yle newspaper reported that this cable connected Finland and Germany. On November 18, Cinia, a fiber optic network company, reported a problem with its C-Lion1 cable.

The cause of the problem is still unknown. The cable is 1173 km long and runs from the Gulf near Helsinki to Rostock in Germany.

Launched in 2016, this cable is the only submarine communication cable that runs directly to Central Europe.

It is also noted that it runs next to Russia's non-functioning Nord Stream, which was done at the design stage to facilitate installation work. The Nord Stream route was chosen for the C-lion1 cable to facilitate installation work. The 144 terabytes per second C-Lion1 cable was severed at around 4 am.

It occurred outside the general shipping route in Sweden's special economic zone. At present, it is impossible to assess whether the event is sabotage or an emergency related to trawling fishing nets, anchoring the vessel, or other technical reasons. As a reminder, in the fall of 2023, an underwater pipeline from Finland to Estonia and a telecom operator's cable were damaged in the Gulf of Finland.

The problem is believed to have been caused by a Chinese vessel that could have torn them with its anchor dragging along the bottom.

The investigation into the incident is still ongoing.

At the same time, there is increasing talk in the West that underwater communications and energy maritime infrastructure could become targets of Russia's hybrid attacks and that such facilities are very difficult to protect.