On Sunday, damage was discovered to an underwater cable between Gotland and Latvia and a ship suspected of being involved has been seized outside Karlskrona. It’s just one in the line of suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea lately.
-It is not new that there is infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, but what we have seen is that several incidents have occurred that may be accidents or sabotage, says former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg in the Foreign Office.
He has been commissioned by the Nordic and Baltic countries to review how to cooperate more closely in defense and security issues in the Baltic Sea.
– The Baltic Sea is of great importance for safety in Europe. After all, it is there and in the region that NATO has almost all its limit on Russia. The Nordic-Baltic border with Russia is largely the entire NATO border.
The suspicions have been directed at Russia and its shadow fleet. But intelligence sources, from both the US and Europe, have told the Washington Post that these are probably accidents. Sources have also told Finnish media that evidence of sabotage has not been found.
“Can’t take the peace for given”
NATO has urged members to switch to a “Wartime Mindset”, a war time mentality. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) recently said that “Sweden is not at war, but that there is no peace”. Jens Stoltenberg agrees.
– We are not at war, but we also do not have the peace we expected after the end of the Cold War. Many people say that in the Nordic countries and Western Europe we have lived in what is called deep peace. We have not been able to imagine war. Unfortunately, we cannot take the peace for granted.
Hear what Jens Stoltenberg thinks about the cable break in the clip above.
Are the cable breaks on the Baltic Sea just accidents, or is there a war under the surface? See the Foreign Office: The war under the surface of SVT Play.