Undersea infrastructure is Europe’s unexpected Achilles’ heel. What’s going on?

Incidents damaging Europe’s undersea networks have become more frequent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, raising suspicions they are the result of sabotage.

On Sunday, an undersea cable ferrying data between Sweden and Latvia was damaged, most likely as a result of an external force, Latvia said. This is just the latest in a string of incidents since late 2022 leading to damage to Europe’s infrastructure that crisscrosses the bottom of the Baltic Sea — pipes carrying natural gas and cables transporting electricity and data. Such incidents have become more frequent over the past couple of years, raising suspicions they are the result of sabotage and triggering a flurry of investigations by European officials — with some openly pointing fingers at Moscow. Russia has denied allegations of any involvement. So far, the impact on Europe’s natural gas, electricity and data flows has been fairly limited. But a concerted attack on data cables could paralyze many nations’ communications networks, jeopardizing hospital surgeries, police responses and more. If Russia is indeed to blame for some of the incidents, they are Moscow’s way of showing its power to disrupt European infrastructure, said Sophia Besch, senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.