Baltic Sea agreed at a summit discussing regional security threats — including Russian cable sabotage — to deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure.
NATO members said they reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a security threat as part of a broader action, dubbed “Baltic Sentry”, in response to a string of incidents in which power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been damaged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The damage from the Jan. 3 incident did not disrupt communications in Taiwan, as the data was routed to other cables.
However, “if enough cables were cut you can potentially cause something as severe as an internet blackout,” said Ian Li Huiyuan, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “Especially for Taiwan’s case, since it’s an island and there’s no overland alternatives.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said last week that undersea cables were damaged by “common maritime accidents” and that Taiwan was making accusations “out of thin air” and intentionally hyping up the “so-called gray zone threat,” according to Reuters.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which makes China policy, responded that the investigation would proceed based on the evidence.
It said Chinese “flag-of-convenience” ships “have a bad reputation in the international community,” pointing to similar cases in Baltic states that are suspected to involve Chinese vessels.
The race to protect cables
It can be difficult to determine whether a cable was damaged by accident or deliberately, but heightened geopolitical tensions have raised suspicions that damage to some critical infrastructure may be sabotage.
Estonia said last month that it would deploy naval assets to protect cables connecting it with Finland after its Estlink 2 cable was damaged on Christmas Day. Finland is investigating a Russian oil tanker that was seized after the incident and may have been dragging its anchor along the seabed.
“Three cases in one year cannot be a coincidence,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said last month.
NATO is also deploying at least two ships to the Baltic Sea area for surveillance.
While the alliance’s heightened alert mostly involves Russia’s “shadow fleet” of smuggling ships, Chinese-owned vessels have come under suspicion as well, including in November when one freighter was detained for weeks in Danish waters after two fiber-optic cables were damaged.
The ship, Yi Peng 3, was alleged to have damaged cables that ran between Sweden and Lithuania and Finland and Germany after leaving the Russian port of Ust-Luga, on the Gulf of Finland. The ship continued its journey after investigators from Sweden and other countries were allowed to board.
Swedish authorities said they were satisfied with the inspection and did not say whether any evidence had been found. China has said it will continue to cooperate with regional authorities in the investigation.
Though European authorities have detained ships when sabotage is suspected, in the absence of concrete proof they have stopped short of directly blaming Moscow or Beijing.
Still, the anxiety in Taiwan is heightened.
“Patrol of undersea cables is really time-consuming. It adds an extra burden and becomes more resource-consuming for the coast guard,” said Yisuo Tzeng, a Taipei-based researcher at Taiwan’s defense ministry-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
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The Taiwanese coast guard said that although the intentions of the Xing Shun 39 on Jan. 3 were “impossible to confirm,” it could not rule out the possibility of the vessel “engaging in gray-zone interference.”
The coast guard said it was unable to board the vessel due to bad weather, but had asked South Korean authorities in Busan, its destination port, to collect evidence.
Data from Marine Traffic showed the freighter making erratic movements that day a few miles off Taiwan’s northern city of Keelung, where a submarine cable connects the island to both the U.S. and China.
Because the cable is also connected to China, some analysts say it may be premature to blame Beijing for the disruption.