RIGA - The Baltic States are technologically very vulnerable, and this should be understood when commenting on the damage to under-sea cables in the Baltic Sea, Janis Kazocins, former National Security Adviser to the President of Latvia, said in an interview with TV3 this morning.
He stressed that our gas supplies from the north and west come partly under the sea. We also need to think about communication cables. "Of course, it is very difficult to operate without communications," he stressed.
Under strained circumstances, Russia might try to take advantage of this, he said, suggesting that the damage to the cables might be an attempt to see how effective such actions could be and what would be done in response.
He also assessed that a conventional Russian attack on NATO, including the Baltic States, would not be likely in the coming years. "They cannot even take Donbas. It is not realistic to launch a wider war against NATO now," he said.
On hybrid warfare, Kazocins pointed out that Latvia is vulnerable, especially in the energy field. Therefore, it is important to have different ways to strengthen resilience, and the government is working on this.
The AFP news agency reports that the prime ministers of Sweden and Denmark said Wednesday they were not ruling out "sabotage" in the severing of two Baltic Sea cables, adding there was an increased risk of hybrid attacks.
The C-Lion 1 submarine cable connecting Helsinki and the German port of Rostock was cut south of Oland island in Swedish waters, some 700 kilometres (435 miles) from Helsinki on Monday.
Early Sunday, another telecoms cable, the Arelion, running from the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland to Lithuania, was also damaged.
The four countries affected by the cuts -- Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Sweden -- have all launched investigations into the incidents.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Tuesday that "we also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it was sabotage".
Denmark's navy said Wednesday it was shadowing a Chinese cargo vessel in the Baltic Sea, which according to ship tracking sites had been in the area at the time the C-Lion 1 cable was damaged.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been several such cases, highlighting the mounting tensions in the Baltic region.
In September 2022, a series of underwater blasts ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe.
In October 2023, an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia had to be closed after it was damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship.
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