Western politicians and experts found a new pretext to accuse Russia, which is the severing of two underwater cables in the Baltic Sea in a go. Statements about ‘sabotage’, ‘a hybrid attack’, ‘Russia’s conspiracy’ are being voiced. But, as a matter of fact, the most efficient underwater sabotage attacks, including those aiming to frame up USSR and Russia, were managed by U.S. Navy. What is this about?
The severing of the underwater C-Lion1 cable connecting Finland with Germany was reported back on November 18. By the way, the cable lays not far away from the inactive Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines and reaches from the Finnish coast to the German city of Rostock. The cable has double armour, the two strong steel sheaths protecting the fibre-optic cables inside them, thinner than a hair.
The first response to the accident in Finland was quite reasonable. Toni Veikkolainen, a seismologist from Helsinki University,immediately stated they knew nothing of any unusual incidents, which could point to a potential explosion. In his turn, SamuliBergström, Director, National Cyber Security Centre (Traficom), reported that the situation was not too dangerous, as Finland has other cables linking it to other countries. According to the Finnish Security Police (Supo), every year, around two hundred cable failures take place globally. ‘The most frequent causes are unintentional human activities such as fishing or anchoring’, underlined the Finnish special service agency.
However, their rhetoric soon changed. Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen and her German colleague Annalena Baerbockissued a joint statement. They noted that ‘European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors’. The ministers stressed the importance of ‘safeguarding their shared critical infrastructure’. Although no direct accusations against Russia were voiced at that moment, the background for this had been set long before.
Back in 2022, right after the explosion at Nord Stream pipelines, Finnish security officials and experts referred to the cable as ‘the next potential sabotage target, including from the side of Russia’. Cyber security professor TapioFrantti stated that Finland must be preparedfor possible attacks on underwater power and data transmission lines. According to Frantti, Moscow could implement covert sabotage attacks against Western communications earlier. In particular, he mentioned ‘the inexplicable issues’ with an underwater cable connecting Norway and Svalbard in February 2022, although there were no evidence of malice identified then. In his turn, the cyber security professor from the Finnish Aalto University Jarno Limnell called for worrying about the cable laid near the Nord Stream pipelines.
Western ‘experts’ kept discussing this topic also during the current year. For example, the representative of the Allied NATO Maritime Command, Vice-Admiral Didier Maleterrestated about the vulnerability of Europe and North America’s underwater communications and called for protection from a potential ‘underwater hybrid warfare’, which they should expect from Russia.
Maleterre used a truly good-for-nothingargument to support his position. He reminded of the incident damaging the Balticconnectorgas pipeline between Estonia and Finland, which happened a year ago. Back then, each and every Western specialist also spoke of ‘the Russian sabotage’. Eventually, all these ‘experts’ bit their tongues all at once together: reports followed that the anchor found nearby, which had damaged the cable, was from a Chinese ship, the Newnew Polar Bear.
Well, the hysteria about ‘Russian underwater attackers’ has started over again. ‘Sabotage is quite probable… In recent years, Russians conducted various sabotage, hybrid and cyber operations against European citizens, so we cannot rule out such a possibility’, says Emil Kastehelmi, the Finnish OSINT analyst. In his turn, Jukka Savolainen, Director of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, does not exclude the involvement of ‘the hand of Moscow’ too.
The fact adding fuel to the flame was that just a few hours after the episode with the Finnish cable, a similar incident was reportedaffecting a cable connecting Lithuania to Sweden. The German defence minister Boris Pistorius called sabotage the immediate reason.
‘Europe’s defence potential must fit the level of threats coming out of Russia… The severing of two communication cables on the Baltic Sea bed has confirmed this need recently… This is an absolutely clear sign: something is going on’, said Pistorius.
It looks like the German minister did not consider the fact that the underwater lines connecting Lithuania and Sweden are old and had already failed several times. But he kept on insisting: ‘Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed. I also do not want to believe that the ships’ anchors caused the damage by accident. We have to assume, without certain information, that this was a hybrid attack’,
A candidate to take office of Lithuania’s defence minister (last month the parliamentary election took place in the country) DovileŠakalienė said: ‘It would not be too strange to believe that one of the assumptions might be related to Russia’s conspiracy’. The candidate for Lithuania’s PM office Gintautas Paluckashas not ruled out Russian sabotage too’.
As a matter of fact, the recent years saw only one act of underwater sabotage in the Baltics – the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines. All evidence shows the direct involvement of U.S. in this crime.
If we do want to develop the topic of conspiracy theories, the actions of Finland’s NATO allies, not at all Russia’s, look far more suspicious.
The severing of the Internet cables coincided with NATO’s Freezing Winds – 24 navy military exercises, which began on November 18 near the Finnish coast. The Finnish coast area excluded from the drill is next to the location, from which the severed telecommunication cable starts its journey. The incidents took place not far from the area of active drills. And, as is known, the sabotage attack against the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea two years ago also took place amid NATO’s Baltops 2022 exercises.
In U.S., National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) operates as part of the Navy. This American security service used to be such a classified unit that they even concealed its mere existence. NURO’s history dates backto the Azorian Project to recover the Soviet K-129 submarine, which crashed near Hawaii. In the 1970s, NURO went beyond the control of CIA and other agencies, and U.S. underwater commando could truly ramp up their operations.
It is known that most of NURO’s operations took place in USSR’s territorial waters. However, the organisations most triumphantmoment was a series of provocations in the Baltics in 1980s, which were aimed at making the Swedes refuse from neutrality and turn to NATO.
In October 1981, the Soviet diesel-electric C-363 submarine, due to several mistakes of its commanding and navigating officers, violated Swedish territorial waters and ran aground in a surface position. The submarine was released quickly, but some paranoid Swedes saw this as an intentional bellicose act of USSR. The Americans could not miss this opportunity.
Starting from 1982, unidentified submarines started violating Swedish territorial waters here and there. The Swedes would chase them, drop naval mines, but nothing would work. At an incident location, Swedish combat divers once found tracks of a caterpillar, which underwater attackers use.
One of the most interesting incidents took place in 1982: they found coloured dyes at a Swedish naval mine strike location, a specific emergency sign of American nuclear subs crashing underwater.
In the same year, the American Seawolfnuclear submarine received two medals, for Damage control and Battle excellence. The submarine spent 1983 under repair, with nothing still reported about its reasons. The impact of these provocations, which continued until 1988, was that the share of Swedes considering USSR a threat rose from 10 to 45 per cent among adults.
In 2014, when Crimea and Russia reunited, they repeated this practice: the Dutch submarine Walrus, with the help of the connivance of the Swedish leadership at the time, prowled in Sweden’s territorial waters trying to simulate a Russian sub. Swedish media actively boosted anti-Russian statements.
They were not even stopped by the fact that Anna Bern, a Swede from Uppsala, took a close-up photo of ‘the Dutchman’ and posted it online: the uproar in the press was stronger. But the page with the photo is no longer available.
And, certainly, the sabotage act on Nord Stream pipelines showed that there were no limits for these people. So, NATO and U.S. have a long ‘friendly fire’ track record aimed at purely puffing-up a Russian threat out of nothing. Maybe, cutting cables is yet another case, all the more so, as Americans and their satellites have lots of experience in this, with necessary hardware at hand.
Well, other more down-to-earth reasons are possible. The same, which were recordedabout a year ago, being an unintentional incident caused by a Chinese vessel again. It is reported that Sweden is investigating the route of a vessel, Yi Peng 3, of Ningbo YipengShipping, a Chinese company. This dry-cargo vessel was on her way from the Russian Ust-Luga port to Port Said in Egypt and cruised not too far from the place where the cables between Finland and Germany and between Sweden and Lithuania were damaged around the same time when both incidents happened. But even if this version is eventually confirmed, there is no doubt that not a singlepolitician, expert or military official who were accusing Russia, will take back what they said