A second submarine telecommunications cable linking Sweden to Lithuania has been damaged, the Swedish Minister of Civil Defense told France-Presse, a day after a cable linking Finland to Germany was severed.
"It is essential to clarify the reasons why two cables are not working in the Baltic Sea," Carl-Oskar Bohlin said in a message sent to Agence France-Presse, at a time when the German government admits the possibility of sabotage.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said today that an act of sabotage could have been the cause of the damage to two telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea, one between Finland and Germany and the other between Sweden and Lithuania.
"Nobody believes that these cables were cut by accident. We have to assume that it was sabotage," Pistorius said on the sidelines of a meeting of European Union defence ministers in Brussels.
"I do not believe the versions that (ship) anchors caused damage to these cables by chance," the German minister added.
On Monday, the German and Finnish governments announced an investigation into the causes of the rupture of an underwater fibre optic cable between Helsinki and Rostock, a port in northern Germany.
On Monday evening, Lithuanian television station LRT quoted Swedish telecom operator Telia as saying that a telecommunications cable between Sweden and Lithuania had been damaged on Sunday.
In recent months, there have been several incidents in the Baltic region, a maritime area shared by the Nordic countries, the Baltic states, Poland and Germany, which are concerned about threats of destabilization attributed to Moscow.
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