Latvia says submarine cable with Sweden has been damaged

An underwater fiber-optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged in the Baltic Sea. This was reported on January 26 by the portal LSM with reference to the owner - the company Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC).

It is noted that the company's monitoring systems have recorded interruptions in data transmission on the section between Latvian Ventspils and Swedish Gotland.

"At the moment there are reasons to believe that the cable is significantly damaged and that the damage occurred due to an external impact," the portal quotes Vineta Sprugaine, head of LVRTC's corporate communications department, as saying.

A patrol vessel has been dispatched to the site of the alleged cable damage.

Prime Minister Evika Silinya said on social network X (formerly Twitter) that ministers and heads of services had been summoned in connection with the accident.

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Earlier, on December 25, 2024, there was an emergency outage of the EstLink 2 DC cable between Estonia and Finland. The Estonian electricity and gas grid operator Elering said that the cause of the accident was not known, but the reliability of the country's power supply was ensured, and reserve capacities were used to compensate for the lack of electricity.

Later, Finnish police stopped the Kukapo Islands-flagged tanker Eagle S on suspicion of breaking a cable in the Baltic. As a precaution against disrupting the investigation, Finnish police banned seven members of the tanker's crew from leaving the country first, followed by the same ban on an eighth.

Later, on January 16, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the allegations of a Russian trace in the damage of cables at the bottom of the Baltic Sea were needed to limit oil exports from Russia, as well as shipping in the water area.