Ukrainian Navy on Baltic Sea cable damage: Russians could master "anchor attacks"

This was stated on national television by the spokesman for the Ukrainian Naval Forces, Dmytro Pletenchuk.

"As you can see, they (the Russian Federation - ed.) are wary of acting overtly because in fact the Baltic Sea has already become NATO's internal sea and, of course, the Russians have no edge there. Moreover, they may find themselves in a real blockade there. But as for those cases of hybrid methods of influencing neighbors, well, in fact, I used to favor the version of a coincidence. See, from a practical point of view, to pull off something like that in this way, to do this intentionally would be quite difficult. But the quantitative indicator already suggests that, most likely, this is already some kind of tactic, and, apparently, they have mastered a new type of aggression, such as an ‘anchor attack,’” the spokesman believes.

In his opinion, the number of incidents, which have never occurred that often previously, may indicate that this is already a pattern that is quite difficult to prove. "This is another ‘we are not here’ thing, but already in a different, maritime version," the Navy spox concluded.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, an underwater fiber-optic cable of the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC) was damaged in the Baltic Sea. The transmission monitoring system recorded data transmission interruptions on the Ventspils - Gotland (Sweden) section.

On January 26, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the Swedish side would assist Latvia with the investigation.

In November 2024, two fiber-optic cables sustained damage, one of which connecting Finland and Germany, and the other – Sweden and Lithuania. The incidents raised suspicions of sabotage.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced said the Alliance was launching the Baltic Sentry mission to strengthen the protection of critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

Photo: Suspilne