Nato has launched a new campaign to increase surveillance of ships in the Baltic Sea after sensitive submarine cables were damaged or cut off last year.
Nato chief Mark Rutte said the operation, called “Baltic Sentry”, would involve several surveillance planes, warships and drones.
His announcement was made at a conference in Helsinki that was attended by all NATO countries in the Baltic Sea – Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.
Although Russia was not specifically ruled out as the cause of the damage to the cables, Rutte said that Nato would step up monitoring of Moscow’s “shadow ships” – ships with no clear identity used to carry blocked oil products.
Tensions between NATO countries and Russia have been steadily increasing since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“There is reason to be very concerned” about infrastructure damage, Rutte said. He added that Nato would respond forcefully to such incidents, by boarding suspected vessels and, if necessary, seizing them.
He declined to reveal more details on the number of assets that will be part of the Baltic Sentry initiative, as he said this could change frequently and he did not wish to make “the enemy smarter than they already are”.
Undersea infrastructure is important not only for providing electricity but also because more than 95% of Internet traffic is protected by undersea cables, Rutte said, adding that “1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) of cables ensure an estimated 10 trillion-dollar . a daily transaction”.
In his letter to X, he said Nato will do “what is necessary to ensure the safety and security of our critical infrastructure and everything we consider important”.
There has been an increase in unexplained damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic in recent months.
The latest disaster for undersea infrastructure the power cable running between Finland and Estonia has been cut in late December.
Finnish guards boarded the oil tanker Eagle S – which was sailing under the flag of the Cook Islands – and steered it into Finnish waters, while Estonia sent a patrol vessel to protect an undersea power cable.
On Monday, Risto Lohi of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation told Reuters that the Eagle S was threatening to cut a secondary power cable and gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia when it was seized.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in December that damage to submarine infrastructure had become so “frequent” that he questioned the idea that the damage could be considered “accidental” or “just maritime technology”.
Tsahkna did not blame Russia directly. So did Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who said on Sunday that while Sweden does not come to conclusions or “accuse anyone of destruction without solid reasons”, it is also “not ignorance”.
“The security situation and the fact that strange things happen many times in the Baltic Sea also make us believe that bad intentions cannot be ruled out.”
“There is little evidence that the ship could have made a mistake without seeing it… without understanding that it could cause damage,” he said.
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