NATO is deploying eyes in the sky and on the Baltic Sea to protect cables and pipelines that stitch together the nine countries with shores on Baltic waters

Rüdiger Strempel reflects on Finland’s special connection with HELCOM and the organisation’s regional efforts to protect the Baltic Sea

TOKYO (Reuters) - Shipping firms may need to pay a fee to use the Baltic Sea, one of the world's busiest shipping routes, in order to cover the high costs of protecting undersea cables, Estonia's defence minister said on Wednesday following a spate of breaches.

After a series of suspected undersea cable cuttings, NATO has launched a new surveillance and deterrence mission to protect critical infrastructure under the Baltic Sea.

An undersea data cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged early on January 26, the latest in a series of similar incidents in the Baltic Sea in which critical seabed energy and communications lines are believed to have been severed by ships traveling to or from Russian ports.

"Those those cables have been built by regulations that never took into account active sabotage at sea," David van Weel told Euractiv.

Sweden has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected aggravated “sabotage” and ordered the detention of a vessel in the Baltic Sea suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland earlier that day.

Sweden is investigating damage to a data cable linked to Latvia, the latest breach in the Baltic Sea region where European authorities are on high alert.

Norwegian police have arrested a ship with a Russian crew on suspicion of involvement in the damage to a fibre optic cable between Latvia and Sweden in the Baltic Sea. Source: European Pravda, citing the police’s statement Details: Norwegian authorities confirmed that the Silver Dania was detained following a legal request from Latvian authorities

OSLO (Reuters) -Norwegian police said on Friday they had seized and boarded a Norwegian ship with an all-Russian crew on suspicion of involvement in causing damage to a telecoms cable in the Baltic

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda says that any peace settlement in Ukraine must involve Kyiv and come with more defense spending by regional countries to deter future Russian aggression