While the world was watching U.S. forces’ spectacular kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, dramatic happenings were unfolding in the Baltic Sea and its Gulf of Finland arm, too. But with Venezuela holding the world’s attention, few people paid any mind to the Baltic Sea. That’s a pity, because within the course of less than a week, six cables were mauled there. After a yearlong hiatus, the cable-cutting specter appears to have returned. Now, with NATO distracted by a crisis over Greenland, the question is what Western states can do about these attacks.

The United States’ Jan. 3 intervention in Venezuela was an operation perfectly suited to television: explosions; darkness; and low-flying helicopters carrying troops who descended, seized Maduro and his wife, and whisked them out of the country. No wonder large chunks of the world could think and speak of nothing else.

While the world was watching U.S. forces’ spectacular kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, dramatic happenings were unfolding in the Baltic Sea and its Gulf of Finland arm, too. But with Venezuela holding the world’s attention, few people paid any mind to the Baltic Sea. That’s a pity, because within the course of less than a week, six cables were mauled there. After a yearlong hiatus, the cable-cutting specter appears to have returned. Now, with NATO distracted by a crisis over Greenland, the question is what Western states can do about these attacks.

The United States’ Jan. 3 intervention in Venezuela was an operation perfectly suited to television: explosions; darkness; and low-flying helicopters carrying troops who descended, seized Maduro and his wife, and whisked them out of the country. No wonder large chunks of the world could think and speak of nothing else.

On the other side of the world, a completely different drama was unfolding. On Dec. 31, a data cable connecting Finland and Estonia malfunctioned, and it quickly became clear that it had been struck by an external object. The Finnish and Estonian authorities quickly identified the likely perpetrator among the ships navigating the Gulf of Finland: the St. Vincent and the Grenadines-flagged cargo vessel Fitburg, which was en route from the Russian port of St. Petersburg to Haifa, Israel, and had been on top of the cable when it stopped working. What’s more, the Finnish authorities could see that the ship appeared to be dragging its anchor.

In a swift operation, the Finnish Border Guard approached the suspect, which had crossed  into Finland’s exclusive economic zone from Estonia’s, and instructed it to enter Finnish........

© Foreign Policy