NATO's newest member comes out swinging following latest Baltic Sea cable attack
Sweden has committed to sending naval forces into the Baltic Sea following yet another suspected Russian attack on underwater cables in the region.
The deployment of three warships and a surveillance airplane from NATO's newest member to assist the bloc's attempts to prevent more subsea cable sabotage marks Sweden's first such foray, but Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has suggested it may hardly be the last.
"Sweden is not at war. But there is no peace either," Kristersson said in a speech over the weekend at Sweden's annual defense conference in Sälen. "Sweden has changed. From being a little too often a blue-eyed idealist on the sidelines, to becoming a realist in the center of events."
While touching on a series of Russia-related issues in his speech, Kristersson's address centered on damage to two subsea cables in the Baltic owned by Finnish telecom firm Elisa and the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 subsea power line in late December.
While Elisa's cables have been repaired, Estlink 2 is likely to be down for months. While no one is jumping to conclusions, it looks an awful lot like the damage was intentional sabotage by oil tanker Eagle S, a craft believed to be part of Russia's "shadow fleet" [PDF] of tanker ships being used to evade oil export sanctions put in place following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
