How can the Baltic states be defended by hybrid threats?

The recent damage to submarine telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea connecting Germany with Finland and Lithuania with Sweden are both considered acts of sabotage, and have reminded us of the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to hybrid attacks.

Suspicion on who caused the damage is currently focused on Russia.

“For countries bordering the Baltic Sea, subsea infrastructure is extremely important, especially for countries on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, the Baltic States and Finland, because a large part of our data and energy infrastructure connections between all EU countries pass under the Baltic Sea: data cables, electric cables, gas pipelines,” Henrik Praks, an Estonia-based researcher at the International Centre for Security and Defence (ICDS), tells Euronews.

The stakes are indeed high. 90% of global digital communications data passes through submarine cables. Bordered by eight member states of the European Union, the Baltic Sea is a strategic area that remains vulnerable to hybrid attacks.

“The marine environment is governed by specific legal acts where the universal freedom of navigation deriving from the law of the sea offers coastal states very few real possibilities to arrest and pursue vessels, for example merchant ships, that would be involved in such illegal activity,” explains Praks.

For its part, the European Council condemned the increase in hybrid activities led by Russia against the EU, including disinformation, cyberattacks, as well as the weaponisation of migration.

Disrupting Western societies and arousing fear in the population are the main goals of these hybrid attacks, claims Joris Van Bladel, a researcher at the Egmont Institute in Brussels.

“Why are they doing that? Because it's