Undersea communication cable linking Finland to continental Europe damaged: Report

By Ahmet Gencturk

ATHENS (AA) – An undersea communication cable linking Finland to continental Europe via Germany has been damaged, cutting off telecommunications through the C-Lion1 cable, local media reported Monday.

Samuli Bergström, communications chief at Finland's National Cyber Security Centre (Traficom), confirmed the cable break, which impacted the country's international connections.

“However, it is good to keep in mind that data connections out of Finland go from several different places. Now one of these connections is broken, which may burden others (but the effects are) probably not visible to the average citizen,” Bergström told Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

Tapio Frantti, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Jyväskylä, suggested the cable rupture was likely intentional rather than accidental.​​​​​​​

"When a cable breaks, it raises questions as to why it happened and who might have a motive to do something like this,” he said.

Frantti argued that Russia can have such a motive.

“They really seem to think that they have a special right to do such things. The motive for sabotage is usually that it’s done because it can be done," he added.

However, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) told the broadcaster it was too early to assess the cause of the cable breakage.