Berlin: The shallow waters of the Baltic Sea have become a secondary arena of confrontation in the larger standoff between the East and the West. Fears of hybrid warfare, coupled with key vulnerabilities on both sides, make this narrow stretch of water one of the key areas to watch as hybrid warfare activities expand and NATO bolsters its eastern flank.
Recent events show just how seriously both sides are taking the challenge. When two undersea cables were severed in mid-November – one connecting Germany to Finland, and one Lithuania to a Swedish island – Germany’s defence minister was quick to announce that “no one believes that these cables were cut accidentally,” hammering the point home by adding that “we have to assume … it is sabotage.”
Soon after the cables were cut, armed vessels from several Baltic Sea states, including Denmark, Sweden and Germany, approached a Chinese ship that they suspected of having been responsible for the rupture, the Yi Peng 3, making its way toward the Atlantic. Visible damage on the ship’s anchor and hull, seen by journalists from a Danish state broadcaster, suggested it may have dragged its anchor across the sea floor in an effort to cause damage.
Officials envision fielding a network of drone-based sensors for keeping tabs on vital undersea cables and pipelines in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas.
Satellite-based ship tracking data implies a tense standoff with the ship stopped just a short distance outside of Danish territorial waters and being watched over by armed European vessels. A Russian warship was keeping nearby, spotted on satellite imagery. The ship’s owner, China-based Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, told the Financial Times that “the government has asked the company to cooperate with the investigation.”
It wasn’t the first time that undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea mysteriously and violently disconnected. It wasn’t even the first time that a Chinese cargo ship had dragged its anchor across a cable connecting two NATO states and caused considerable damage in doing so. In October 2023, the New Polar Bear damaged a gas pipeline and data cables in the same manner.
And in September 2022, months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany exploded, leaving a gaping hole and taking them out of commission. While much blame was initially heaped on Russia, the Kremlin has denied any wrongdoing, and additional evidence has emerged since that complicates the picture. A perpetrator has not been publicly identified, although German authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man in connection with the incident.
With the recent accession of Finland and Sweden – two previously longtime neutral states – to NATO, many Western observers triumphantly declared the 386,000 square kilometre sea a “NATO lake.” Russia, whose empire once controlled roughly half the coastline here, now holds on to only about 700 kilometers around Saint Petersburg and its Kaliningrad exclave wedged between Lithuania and Poland. Both are incredibly valuable to Moscow: Kaliningrad is heavily militarised and serves as the headquarters of the Baltic fleet, while Saint Petersburg is one of the region’s most important financial centres and plays a major role in Russian foreign trade.
Kaliningrad is also Russia’s only year-round ice-free port in the Baltic. And the territory’s forward position much closer to Western Europe makes it prime real estate for stationing bombers and missiles, according to Moscow’s calculus. For Russia, as for the other states sharing the Baltic coastline, the sea and its narrow connection to the open Atlantic through the Danish Straits is a crucial link to global trade and commerce.
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