NATO’s Baltic Sea Summit: Taking a Stand Against Critical Infrastructure Sabotage
In his first major speech after taking office as NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte cautioned NATO allies: “We are not at war. But we are certainly not at peace either.” Among other things, Rutte was alluding to the attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure, including submarine cables. He called these “part of a coordinated campaign to destabilize our societies.”
The Baltic Sea is a key battleground of this campaign. Over the past two years, the Baltic has seen several major incidents involving Chinese and Russian freighters. In October 2023, the Hongkong-registered ship Newnew Polar Bear reportedly damaged a gas pipeline. Last December, the Chinese freighter Yi Peng 3 used its anchor to destroy two undersea cables. In the same month, the Eagle S, a tanker from Putin’s so-called shadow fleet, damaged an important undersea power cable between Finland and Estonia. Recently, the Eventin, a second tanker from this shadow fleet, was ship-wrecked off the coast of Rügen, a small island off the northern German coast – posing a potential environmental risk.
These attacks form the backdrop for the NATO Baltic Sea Summit this Tuesday in Helsinki. It is the first NATO summit to focus on the critical underwater infrastructure, crucial for data and energy. Questions that will be discussed include how the Russian shadow fleet can be eliminated and how NATO member states can invest in attribution, deterrence and resilience. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is participating in the summit and should offer Germany’s financial and military contribution to the NATO counter-effort.
The damaged tanker Eventin clearly demonstrates how urgent a response to Russia’s shadow fleet is. The Russian ship, uninsured and carrying 99.000 tons of oil, was rendered rudderless, unable to maneuver after a power failure. Clearly, Moscow accepted the threat of environmental disaster as an acceptable price for deploying its shadow fleet. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has spoken of the “nefarious use of a fleet of rusty tankers” – and for good reason. The Russian fleet presumably consists of hundreds of ships in a similar condition, aiming to use them to circumvent Western economic sanctions.
The good news is that the West can take out the tankers with targeted sanctions. Europe has already sanctioned more than 70 Russian ships. The Biden administration has gone even further: last Friday, it targeted 183 ships in a comprehensive package of sanctions.
And, given the power of the US dollar, US sanctions are sure to be respected – even in Chinese ports, otherwise likely to stymie these efforts.
The economic and environmental issues are one thing; the acts of sabotage against maritime critical infrastructure are another entirely. Targeting such Russian sabotage is far more difficult. A current research project run by the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), in cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office, show as much. Maritime critical infrastructure has been and continues to be an attractive target for gray-zone operations – those operating below the threshold of armed conflict. It is relatively easy to “cause damage without being caught,” the German Navy remarked in a German Bundestag hearing last summer. The vastness of the ocean makes it difficult to monitor and investigate attacks comprehensively. Outside their own territorial waters, states have only limited legal means to home in on and take out suspicious ships.
The European states involved are learning more about how to cooperate and respond decisively when it comes to investigating maritime sabotage – an important initiative, especially given the urgency of the matter. The Nord Stream pipeline destruction in September of 2022 still looms large. At the time, Poland obstructed the investigation by German authorities and allowed a Ukrainian prime suspect to escape. Warsaw thereby sent a fatal signal: EU legal cooperation in investigations into attacks on critical infrastructure does not come at all costs. If the political implications are not to the liking of a member state, cooperation can be put on the backburner.
When the Balticconnector natural gas pipeline was damaged in October 2023, the Finnish authorities quickly suspected Newnew Polar Bear of being responsible for the sabotage. They also found traces of paint on the damaged pipeline that clearly came from the anchor of ship, sailing under the Chinese flag. However, there was not much Finland could do; the freighter had long since sailed on to Russia and then to its Chinese home port.
In the case of the Yi Peng 3, which most likely cut several data cables with its anchor in November 2024, the affected states acted more decisively. Ships from the Danish, Swedish and German navies and coastguards detained the freighter in the Kattegat, the strait between Denmark and Sweden, until Chinese authorities allowed a joint investigative survey – consent that was legally mandated because the ship was found outside territorial waters.
In the case of the Eagle S, a tanker sailing under a flag of the Cook Islands despite being part of the Russian shadow fleet, the Finnish authorities acted with maximum determination. When the ship severed important undersea power cables between Finland and Estonia as well as several data cables at the end of December 2024, the Finnish security forces took over the ship (in territorial waters) and detained the crew as well as the tanker itself in a Finnish port for investigation.
However, the results of these investigations have been meagre at best. So far there are no clear findings as to who instructed the crews of the civilian ships to commit sabotage. Were Beijing’s secret services aware of the Chinese ships’ plans to commit sabotage? Perhaps they even coordinated with Russia’s secret service to do so? Did Moscow bribe or blackmail parts of the largely Indian and Georgian crew of the Eagle S?
Deterring future sabotage will only work if the attackers fear being discovered and paying a high price for their actions. This is currently far from being the case. The fact that NATO is mobilizing ships for surveillance is a step in the right direction. The inspector of the German navy, Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaack, rightly suggests combining sensor data from civilian, governmental, non-governmental and military sources for an optimal picture of the situation. He also calls for better cooperation between the German navy, the Federal Maritime Police and other central government agencies as well as private agencies responsible for critical infrastructure on land. To ensure more effective surveillance, the navy also needs more underwater drones.
The international response must not only focus on attribution and deterrence, but also on resilience: redundant energy and data connections are expensive, but absolutely indispensable. One way to increase resilience is by investing far more into infrastructure repair ships. The fact that no repair ship has yet been found to restore the power cable that was damaged in December between Finland and Estonia is a critical oversight. Additionally, Europe should strengthen its own submarine cable industry and ensure that Chinese companies in Europe do not get to play a role producing its critical infrastructure, be it submarine data and power cables or wind farms.
An anchor dragged across the seabed is a very primitive means of sabotage, but even that presents Europe with problems that have yet to be resolved. With the possibility of war looming between European NATO members and Russia, it is all the more important to carry out a stress test for this critical infrastructure. Russia is systematically preparing its fleet for war; in such a scenario, massive attacks on infrastructure should be expected. This would be nothing new. One of Britain’s first acts in the First World War was to cut four of the German Empire’s five telegraph cables — and to tap into the only remaining one for espionage purposes.
This commentary was originally published in ZEIT ONLINE on January 13, 2025 (in German).
