The Baltic Sea is traversed by many means of communication and power distribution and by pipelines. These are vulnerable to incidents which might damage them, in particular involving anchoring. There have been multiple incidents which have caused disruption to undersea infrastructure.
Summary table +Baltic Sea Underwater Infrastructure Events Date Facility Type Between And Nature of event Suspects Notes 10 October 2004 Bornholm Cable power cable Sweden Denmark severed possibly Tuc Merkur tug and barge with coal to the Avedøre Power Station January 2010 Bornholm Cable power cable Sweden Denmark severed Timberland 15 January 2013 Bornholm Cable power cable Sweden Denmark severed not named compensation paid 28 February 2022 Bornholm Cable power cable Sweden Denmark severed tanker Samus Swan tanker's anchor fouled the cable 26 September 2022 Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines Russia Germany explosion unknown Danish and German investigations 7 October 2023 EE-S1 fiberoptic communications cable Sweden Estonia partly severed cargo ships Sevmorput and Newnew Polar Bear investigation concluded cable was damaged by external force 8 October 2023 Balticconnector gas pipeline Finland Estonia physical container ship Newnew Polar Bear Chinese government later admitted the ship was at fault 18 November 2024 BCS East-West Interlink data cable Sweden Lithuania severed bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 investigation ongoing 18 November 2024 C-Lion1 data cable Finland Germany severed bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 investigation ongoing 25 December 2024 Estlink 2 power cable Finland Estonia severed oil tanker Eagle S investigation ongoing 26 January 2025 TV & Radio fiberoptic TV & radio cable Sweden Latvia severed Vezhen or Silver Dania? suspicions of deliberate sabotage later dropped - deemed an accident 26 January 2025 (detected February) C-Lion1 submarine cable telecommunications Finland Germany data disturbance ? investigation ongoing 31 December 2025 Elisa data cable data cable Finland Estonia data disruption freighter Fitburg investigation ongoing; anchor dragged 10s of km
See also
2024 Baltic Sea submarine cable disruptions Cable landing point List of international submarine communications cables Nordic Warden Russian hybrid warfare Russian sabotage operations in Europe Russian shadow fleet Severing of the Svalbard undersea cable
References
Further reading Submarine Cable Map 2025 telegeography.com