An undersea telecommunications cable linking Finland and Germany across the Baltic Sea has been cut, raising suspicions of deliberate damage, nato said the member states.

On Monday, Finnish company Cinia, which builds fiber optic networks and provides telecommunications services, said a “fault” had been detected in the C-Lion1 submarine cable. “Due to the mistake, the services provided on C-Lion1 are stopped,” it announced.

This was the first time the cable broke, said Ari-Jussi Knaapila, CEO of Cinia. The cable did not break without an external impact, a company spokesman explained, adding that no seismic event such as earthquakes could have been responsible for this.

“That such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes for the volatility of our times. A thorough investigation is underway,” Finland and Germany they said in a joint statement that they were deeply concerned about the incident.

“Our European security is not only threatened by Russiathe war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from the hybrid war of malicious actors,” they added. “Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.”

This came after Nikolai Patrushev, a former secretary of Russia’s Security Council and an ally of the president Vladimir Putinaccused the United States and the United Kingdom of intending sabotage underwater internet cables “to promote their economic interests”.

In an interview published last week, he also claimed that both the US and the UK were behind the September 2022 one. attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelineswhich go under Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany to supply Russian natural gas.

The 728-mile long C-Lion1 lands at Hanko and Helsinki in southern Finland, as well as Rostock in northern Germany. It was launched in 2016 and connects telecommunications networks in Central Europe with Finland and other Nordic states, according to Cinia.

According to Cinia, the cut part of the cable is located in waters southeast of the Swedish island of Öland, which is about halfway along the cable. The incident area is in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone and outside the busiest shipping area.

Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service told the country’s public broadcaster Yle that it was “too early” to assess the cause of the incident, noting that human activity, including fishing and anchoring, is the most common cause of undersea cable breaks.

Following the incident, Cinia began repair work by preparing a repair vessel on site. However, the company acknowledged that it was not immediately clear how long the work would take, saying it typically takes five to 15 days to repair a damaged submarine cable.

Katja Bego, a senior researcher at Chatham House’s international security program in the UK, said on social media platform Bluesky that cable failures were not uncommon in busy shipping areas such as the Baltic Sea. “The overwhelming majority (of breakdowns) are accidental,” Bego said.

“The usual Kremlin playbook suggests that we interpret this as a warning that this is something that Russia intends to do itself,” she said, referring to Patrushev’s comment.

Newsweek contacted the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reported on Saturday that the Russian spy ship Amber was escorted out of the Irish Sea, which lies between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain, after transiting Irish economic waters containing submarine pipelines and cables.