Baltic Sea mystery: Data cables go dark as experts debate Russian involvement

In a puzzling turn-of-events two under-sea data links connecting Baltic countries went dark this week (one between Sweden-Lithuania and another Finland-Germany connection)

The incident happened right when some Finnish nuclear plants went off-line which made experts think about possible non-random nature of these break-downs. Boris Pistorius German defense chief quickly pointed to sabotage saying its not likely to be a ships anchor

There is a risk of seeing everything one way in a hall of mirrors

Baltic Sea has seen its share of weird stuff lately; with Russian survey-ships darting around checking out underwater things like cables wind-farms and pipes. The whole area became more tense since Sweden and Finland joined NATO about a year ago

Getting to the bottom of this mess wont be quick - fixing broken sea-cables takes weeks and finding out what exactly happened isnt easy. Most cable problems come from regular accidents like ships anchors or fishing nets but some experts think theres more to it

• Dragging anchors can damage cables
• Fishing trawlers often cause problems
• Ships not knowing local rules make mistakes
• Weather can affect underwater equipment

This reminds everyone about that Nord Stream pipeline thing from couple years back which still hasnt been fully explained. The sea keeps its secrets well and finding real proof of who did what is super-hard

European countries dont want to take chances though - UK France Germany and others just said theyll work more on protecting stuff from Russias actions. Theyʼre putting extra cables in to make sure one break cant shut everything down which is smart but costs a lot

The whole thing shows how tricky it is to keep underwater tech safe in todays world where you cant always tell if something broke by accident or if someone meant to break it