STOCKHOLM, Dec 7, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Russia has stepped up its hybrid warfare 
tactics in the Baltic Sea and NATO countries in the region should prepare for 
an extended conflict with Moscow, experts said, after cables were severed and 
navigation systems scrambled.

Berlin said this week that a Russian cargo ship recently fired signal flares 
at a German military helicopter, another sign of the mounting tensions in the 
Baltic Sea where all of the bordering countries except Russia are now NATO 
members.

There is currently an "increase of Russian navy and civilian vessels in the 
Baltic Sea, this presence is increasing significantly," German Defence 
Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday.

"What the Russian navy is trying to do is send a signal, saying: 'We are 
here'," he added.

Russian political analyst Konstantin Kalachev said meanwhile that "Russia 
does not at all like the point of view that would have the Baltic Sea be a 
NATO 'lake'," he said.

Tensions in the region have escalated since Russia's full-scale invasion of 
Ukraine in February 2022, with European countries regularly expressing 
concern over "hybrid attacks" blamed on Russia.

"The Baltic is in a kind of grey zone between war and peace where NATO 
countries have to be ready for harassment of any kind," Nils Wang, a former 
Danish navy commander, told AFP.

Russia wants to show "that it can basically still make it troublesome for 
NATO to operate in the Baltic," he said.

- Piece of a puzzle -

Concerns were reignited last month after two underwater telecommunications 
cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters of the Baltic Sea in mid-
November.

Sweden has launched a police investigation into suspected sabotage, and has 
expressed interest in a Chinese vessel, the Yi Peng 3, which sailed over the 
area around the time the cables were cut, according to ship tracking sites.

The cargo ship has been anchored in international waters between Sweden and 
Denmark for almost three weeks, guarded alternately by Swedish, German and 
Danish navy and coast guard vessels.

The fact that the Yi Peng 3 is captained by a Russian national and left the 
Russian port of Ust-Luga, west of Saint Petersburg, on November 15 has raised 
eyebrows.

In addition, the ship had operated only in Chinese waters for years until 
March 2024, when it began transiting Russian ports and carrying Russian 
cargo.

China is a close political and economic ally of Russia, whose war in Ukraine 
Beijing has never condemned.

Russia has denied any involvement in the cut cables, as has China, which has 
pledged to cooperate with the Swedish inquiry.

"Physical sabotage is becoming more and more likely because it is simply easy 
for the aggressor to do it," said Moritz Brake, expert at the Center for 
Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies at the University of 
Bonn.

"It has a big effect, not only by sending a signal, but by actually 
physically breaking things," he said.

In October 2023, a gas pipeline and an underwater cable linking Finland, 
Sweden and Estonia were also damaged. Another Chinese cargo vessel is 
believed to have caused that incident, according to Finnish police.

The string of incidents since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine shows that 
"there is indeed an escalation" in the Baltic Sea, said Wojciech Lorenz, 
international security expert at the Polish Institute of International 
Affairs, PISM.

However, "it's one piece of a (bigger) puzzle, where Russia is in the process 
of intensifying" its actions, whether in Ukraine with threats of nuclear war 
or hybrid operations and attempts to destabilise other countries, he said.

- Lengthy hybrid conflict -

Finland recently said it had noticed disturbances to the Global Navigation 
Satellite System (GNSS) in the Baltic, with its coast guard alerting some 
ships they were sailing off course.

"Disturbances of navigation systems and disruption of communication cables 
are illustrators of a new Cold War in a digitalised world," Wang said.

NATO has beefed up its naval presence in the region and is seeking to develop 
its surveillance capabilities, but monitoring everything that happens on the 
seabed is near impossible.

Additionally, Western countries have a lot of critical infrastructure to keep 
an eye on.

For countries bordering the Baltic Sea, the first step is to "show 
transparently to the outside world: this is what is happening here right 
now", said Brake.

"That is the first step towards credible deterrence."

"We may live for many years, even decades, in a situation of hybrid conflict 
like this, and therefore we have to find an effective response," said Lorenz 
of the PISM Institute.

He said the creation of a maritime police mission, as recently proposed by 
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, could be such a step.