Recent events have solidified the Baltic Sea as an area of critical strategic importance. It serves as a vital maritime trading route, hosts considerable networks of Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI), and holds significant potential for the development of new sources of energy. As a result, it is also an area which is highly vulnerable to the increasingly prevalent threat of hybrid attacks – that is, attacks just below the threshold of kinetic warfare, which blur the lines between peace and conflict, such as the sabotage of critical infrastructure.
Notably, over the past 15 months, at least 11 undersea cables, crucial for international communication and energy transmission, have been damaged, raising concerns about deliberate sabotage or hostile grey zone activities from state and non-state actors. Recent incidents also provoked Euro-Atlantic discussions about the vulnerabilities of energy links and CUI in the region, firmly placing the Baltic Sea in the international spotlight and highlighting its strategic importance.
Read the full aricle by Klaudia Maciata at Nato Review: https://tinyurl.com/2c2jh9cu