Anchors have been snagging Baltic Sea cables for most of this century, and nobody noticed. That is the point Finland’s security service made in its latest annual assessment, and it cuts against the idea that every broken line on the seabed is a Kremlin operation.
The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service, known as Supo, released its National Security Overview 2026 on March 10, 2026. The document describes the Baltic as an area of “growing tension” and does not play down Russian activity. But it casts doubt on the habit of treating each cable fault as deliberate state sabotage, which sets it apart from some of Finland’s NATO allies.
Accidents are an old story
Supo’s argument rests on history. In its words, damage to undersea infrastructure has won a lot of publicity lately, “but it is not a very rare phenomenon.” Ship anchors, it says, have regularly damaged cables throughout the 21st century, usually in autumn and winter, whether or not the incidents made the news. Busy shipping lanes, heavy fishing and awkward seabed conditions have long produced faults through dragged anchors and trawlers.
The agency calls the number of cases in recent years “quite typical” for the Baltic. What has changed is the amount of infrastructure on the bottom, which gives a drifting anchor more to hit.
Counting incidents cannot settle intent, Supo says. Each one has to be investigated on its own. The agency also asks what Moscow would gain. State influence operations need a goal and a motive, and causing confusion alone does not justify risky actions that have hurt Russia too. Dragged anchors in recent years have damaged Russian infrastructure as well as Western lines.
A warning about over-attribution
Supo does not clear Russia. It says the security situation in the Baltic is getting worse and calls Russia’s approach “opportunistic and diverse,” not one coordinated campaign to punish Europe. Director Juha Martelius has said that if relations between Europe and Russia improve, “the intelligence threat posed by Russia to Finland will become more diverse, with previous operating methods complemented by methods proven effective in the current environment.”
The sharpest line in the report is aimed at the habit of blaming Moscow by reflex: “as various events are readily attributed to Russia, Russian influencing against Finland may appear more extensive than it truly is.”
The submarine-cable trade press that covered the report read it as a call for care. Accurate attribution lets security services spend their resources on real threats, and it keeps warnings credible when a genuine case of sabotage does turn up. Calling every outage Russian work could also feed the fear of Russian power that Moscow benefits from.
China on the radar
Supo also looks east beyond Russia. It says China’s long-term aim is to become a global leader by “exploiting others,” mainly through technology and the economy. China’s hold on subsea cable manufacturing through HMN Tech, along with its role in shipping, adds to the risk, the agency suggests, because legitimate business can give cover to efforts to build dependencies and reach sensitive data.
