“Two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea have been suddenly disrupted, according to local telecommunications companies, amid fresh warnings of possible Russian interference with global undersea infrastructure.
A communications cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut on Sunday morning around 10:00 a.m. local time, a spokesperson from telecommunications company Telia Lithuania confirmed to CNN.
The company’s monitoring systems could tell there was a cut due to the traffic disruption, and that the cause was likely physical damage to the cable itself, Telia Lithuania spokesperson Audrius Stasiulaitis told CNN. “We can confirm that the internet traffic disruption was not caused by equipment failure but by physical damage to the fiber optic cable.”
Another cable linking Finland and Germany was also disrupted, according to Cinia, the state-controlled Finnish company that runs the link. The C-Lion cable – the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and Central Europe – spans nearly 1,200 kilometers (730 miles), alongside other key pieces of infrastructure, including gas pipelines and power cables.
The incidents came as two of the affected countries, Sweden and Finland, updated their guidance to citizens on how to survive war. Millions of households in the Nordic nations will be given booklets with instructions on how to prepare for the effects of military conflicts, communications outages and power cuts.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mystery-fault-takes-undersea-internet-143858766.html
“What set off the spat this time was Lithuania’s enforcement of EU sanctions against Russia after a months-long transition period. Because Kaliningrad isn’t directly connected to the rest of Russia, it gets most of its supplies by land routes or by sea. Lithuania’s state rail operator announced last week that it would no longer allow the transit of sanctioned goods — like steel products and construction materials — through Lithuania to Kaliningrad.
Russia accused Lithuania of staging a blockade, with Russia’s foreign ministry warning of “practical” retaliation. “Both Lithuania and the EU have been notified through their diplomatic missions in Moscow that such actions are inadmissible and that the steps taken should be overturned and the situation put back on the legal, legitimate track,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to state-run media. “If this fails to be done, then, of course, retaliatory moves will be inevitable.”
Lithuania has said this is not a blockade, and they are just doing additional checks and following the sanctions rules that all EU states agreed on. “First, any talk of a blockade of Kaliningrad is a lie. Second, Lithuania is complying with the sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia for its aggression and war against Ukraine,” said Lithuania Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė. Only sanctioned items are targeted; food and medicine can still move, and passenger travel continues. Plus, Kaliningrad can get goods from Russia by sea.
The European Union, meanwhile, has tried to de-escalate and is working on guidelines to implement checks “in a clever and smart way,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief. “[There are] two objectives: to prevent circumvention of the sanctions; and not to block the traffic. Both things should be possible, and we are working on that,” Borrell said.”
“Because of the warming diplomatic ties between Lithuania and Taiwan, China has unleashed a strict embargo against the Baltic nation — boycotting not only its exports but even goods from other EU countries made with Lithuanian components.
To help ease the pain for its most dogged European ally, Taiwan has announced a $200 million investment plan. And that raises the prospect of co-operation on chips.
Taiwan’s investment plans in Lithuania are not yet finalized, pending studies to be conducted by a team of Taiwanese experts within the next few months. But in an interview with POLITICO, the top Taiwanese diplomat in Vilnius said nothing was off the table, and that Lithuania could act as an inroad to the rest of the European semiconductor market.”
…
““Taiwan is playing its economic cards smartly,” Mathieu Duchâtel, director of the Asia Program at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne said. “Clearly, Taiwan has something concrete to offer to strengthen the European semiconductor ecosystem, and the message is that this is linked to deepening Taiwan’s international space — so this is a form of economic statecraft.””