February 18, 2026:
Last December a cargo ship in the Gulf of Finland severed a vital telecommunications cable using the ship's anchor. The ship was travelling from Russia to Israel. Finnish special operations personnel rappelled onto the deck from a helicopter and took control of the ship. The ship was held for nearly a month in an effort to discover what was going on.
About the same time Latvian police instigated a ship and its crew docked at the port of Liepaja to determine if the ship had anything to do with damage to an underwater telecoms cable running in the Baltic Sea from Latvia to Lithuania.
Baltic Sea nations are alarmed after several power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages occurred since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. As a result NATO nations have increased their presence with warships, maritime patrol aircraft and seagoing drones.
The year began in 2025 with a fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden being damaged by parties unknown. Over the last few years more than a dozen Baltic Sea underwater cables have been damaged or cut. These cables can be repaired in a few weeks, but local Coast Guard officials consider most of these incidents deliberate and that makes them criminal.
NATO countries are alarmed at the amount of damage done to underwater power and communications cables. Worse, when the culprits were identified, they were always Chinese and Russian ships. One of these ships was boarded and searched. Evidence of cable cutting was found. Chinese and Russian officials continue to profess surprise and ignorance of these acts of sabotage. Worse, all this is not new, it’s been going on for some time under the designation of Hybrid Warfare.
It’s not only Russia in the Baltic Sea that is doing this. China recently revealed a new seabed mining and salvage ship that can send small manned or robotic submarines down to depths of 3,000 meters. While this vessel is ideal for what it was designed for, it can also be used to tamper with or cut enemy undersea cables in wartime. Chinese merchant ships are suspected of dragging their anchors along the seafloor to cut cables in the Baltic Sea.
The United States and European nations were alarmed at the recent spate of so-called accidental severing of underwater power and communications cables. The culprits were Chinese and Russian ships that were in the areas when the cables were cut. One of these ships was boarded and searched. Evidence of cable cutting was found. Chinese and Russian officials continue to profess surprise and ignorance of these acts of sabotage. Worse, all this is not new, it’s been going on for some time.