C-Lion1 Internet cable damaged again in Baltic Sea

A new incident has occurred in the Baltic Sea: the C-Lion1 telecommunications cable has broken again, the Finnish news agency Yle reports, citing a statement from the Swedish Coast Guard. The same cable was damaged in November last year.

Image source: cinia.fi

C-Lion1 is owned by Cinia Oy. It is the only cable directly connecting Finland with Central Europe and was put into operation in 2016. The last time it was damaged was in November last year near the Swedish island of Öland, when it took 5 to 15 days to fix the problem. This time, C-Lion1 broke near the island of Gotland in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone. The exact date of the incident remains unknown, but authorities were informed of it on February 20.

Cinia said there was no information yet about the reasons for the incident. The Swedish prosecutor’s office and the Finnish criminal police have already launched a preliminary investigation into the incident. Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen refused to answer whether the incident was accidental or intentional. “But it can be noted that there have been so many such cases that an accident is highly unlikely,” the official added.

The last such incident was recorded at the end of January, when the cable of the Latvian State Radio and Television Broadcasting Centre (LVRTC), which runs between Latvia and Sweden, was damaged. The cause was called “external influence”.