The European Commission unveiled a €347 million subsea infrastructure initiative and a new “Cable Security Toolbox” on February 5, 2026, responding to a wave of suspected sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea. The latest came on January 2, when a telecoms cable linking Sventoji, Lithuania, to Liepāja, Latvia, was damaged by a vessel that Latvian armed forces say altered course to pass directly over the line before it failed — though police later said they found no direct evidence tying the ship to the damage.
The incident follows the December 31, 2025 boarding of the cargo vessel Fitburg by Finnish special forces, suspected of dragging its anchor across cables linking Finland and Estonia, and a growing list of similar cases since 2024 involving vessels linked to Russia’s shadow fleet. NATO and Baltic states have stepped up naval patrols around subsea infrastructure as the alliance treats the pattern of incidents as a deliberate hybrid-warfare threat rather than a series of accidents.
Source: Atlantic Council — https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/how-the-baltic-sea-nations-have-tackled-suspicious-cable-cuts/
