Russia speaks out about the cable break near Nord Stream

Song Minh |

Regarding the cable break near Nord Stream, Russia said it must conduct a thorough investigation.

"Russia - the country whose Nord Stream pipeline is being targeted by sabotage - cares about the security of its critical undersea infrastructure unlike any other country," TASS quoted the Russian Embassy in Denmark as saying.

"It is important to ensure a thorough investigation and clarify why the undersea cables in the Baltic Sea are not yet operational. Speculation on this issue will not facilitate efforts to uncover the truth," the Russian Embassy in Denmark stressed.

Two undersea cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea on November 17 and 18. One line connects Germany and Finland, running along the Nord Stream pipeline; the other connects Sweden and Lithuania.

The Finnish government-owned telecommunications operator Cinia reported the problem of the cable connecting to Germany. According to the company, repairing the cable could take 5 to 15 days.

The German and Finnish foreign ministries expressed concern about the damage in a joint statement on November 18 and said a thorough investigation was underway.

Damage to the second cable was later reported by Swedish telecommunications company Telia. The Swedish Public Prosecutor's Office has begun a preliminary investigation into the cable disruption, classifying it as sabotage.

The Baltic Sea has become a hot spot for undersea sabotage since the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, owned by a consortium of energy companies including Russian gas giant Gazprom and running from Russia to Germany, were rocked by explosions in September 2022.

More than two years later, despite widespread criticism, no one has been held accountable for the Nord Stream sabotages.

Each pipeline had two branches; the explosion made three of the four branches unable to operate.

In April 2023, a joint investigation by Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish public broadcasters claimed that Russia had deployed a squadron of reconnaissance ships in the Baltic Sea to carry out sabotage operations.

Russia, for its part, accused the US and its allies, while German and US media reported that the suspect could be a group of Ukrainians.

Tensions have continued to rise since then.

Just over a year after the Nord Stream explosion, in October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline connecting Finland and Estonia - jointly owned by Estonian gas and electricity company Elering and Finnish gas transmission company Gasgrid - was damaged in an underwater incident. Nearby data cables were also reported to have broken.

Investigators in Finland and Estonia have accused a Chinese container ship of dragging its anchor along the seabed of causing damage, which took six months to repair. They did not specify whether the damage was intentional.

The Baltic Sea has a shallow and narrow basin with three bottlenecks and is surrounded by eight NATO countries.

It is also bordering Russia, with Saint Petersburg - Russia's second largest city - located in the eastern corner of the Gulf of Finland and Russia's Baltic fleet in the land of Kaliningrad.

Tormod Heier, a professor at the Norwegian National Defense University, told Al Jazeera that post-Cold War tensions in the region began in 2004 with the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - joining NATO.

Song Minh
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