NATO launches Baltic Sentry mission to protect submarine cables

NATO has launched a new mission to step up surveillance of ships in the Baltic Sea after crucial submarine cables were damaged or severed last year.

NATO chief Mark Rutte said the mission, dubbed “Baltic Patrol,” will involve more patrol planes, warships and drones.

He stated this at the summit in Helsinki, which was attended by all NATO countries located on the Baltic Sea – Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.

Although Russia was not directly blamed for the cable damage, Rutte said NATO would increase its monitoring of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” – ships without clear ownership used to transport embargoed oil.

Tensions between NATO countries and Russia have been rising inexorably since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“There is cause for serious concern” about infrastructure damage, Rutte said. He added that NATO would respond decisively to such accidents by increasing the interception of suspicious vessels and, if necessary, their seizure.

He declined to provide more details on the number of assets that will be involved in the Baltic Sentry initiative, as he said this could change regularly and that he did not want to make “the enemy smarter than he or she is”.

Underwater infrastructure is important not only for providing electricity, but also because more than 95% of Internet traffic is carried through underwater cables, Rutte said, adding that “1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) of cables guarantee a financial amount of approx. 10 trillion dollars in transactions every day.”

In a message on X, he said NATO would do “whatever is necessary to ensure the safety and security of our critical infrastructure and everything we hold dear.”

In recent months, there has been a surge in unexplained damage to underwater infrastructure in the Baltic.

The last accident with the underwater infrastructure saw the electric cable between Finland and Estonia was cut at the end of December.

A Finnish coast guard crew boarded the Cook Islands-flagged Eagle S oil tanker and steered it into Finnish waters, while Estonia deployed a patrol vessel to protect its undersea power cable.

Risto Lohi of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation told Reuters on Monday that the Eagle S was threatening to cut a second power cable and a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia when it was seized.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in December that damage to underwater infrastructure had become “so frequent” that he questioned the idea that damage could be considered “accidental” or “simply bad sea quality”.

Tsakhna did not directly accuse Russia. Neither did Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristerson, who said on Sunday that Sweden was not jumping to conclusions and not “accusing anyone of sabotage without very good reasons,” but that it was also “not naive.”

“The security situation and the fact that strange things happen again and again in the Baltic Sea also lead us to believe that hostile intentions cannot be ruled out.”

“There is little evidence that the ship accidentally and not noticing it … not realizing the damage it could do,” he said.