Russia has been accused by European governments of escalating hybrid attacks on Ukraine’s Western allies after two fibre-optic telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea were severed.

“Russia is systematically attacking European security architecture,” the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland said in a joint statement.

“Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks.”

The statement was not made in direct response to the cutting of the cables, Reuters reported, citing two European security sources.

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Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius said: “No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally.”

He added: “We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage.”

Investigations have been launched into the destruction of the cables earlier this week.

One linked Finland and Germany while the other connected Sweden and Lithuania.

Russia has repeatedly denied it has sabotaged European infrastructure and has accused the West of making such claims to damage Russian interests.

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Investigations launched into possible sabotage

One cable was damaged on Sunday morning and the other went out of service on Monday.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority has launched a preliminary criminal investigation into the damaged cables on suspicion of possible sabotage.

The country’s civil defence minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said its armed forces and coastguard had picked up ship movements corresponding with the damage to the cables.

“We of course take this very seriously against the background of the serious security situation,” he said.

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said it had also launched an investigation, but Sweden would lead the probe.

NATO’s Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure was working closely with allies in the investigation, an official said.

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Baltic Sea infrastructure damaged

It is not the first time such infrastructure has been damaged in the Baltic Sea.

In September 2022, three Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany were destroyed seven months after Moscow invaded Ukraine.

No one took responsibility for the blasts and while some Western officials initially blamed Moscow, which the Kremlin denied, US and German media reported pro-Ukrainian actors may have been responsible.

The companies owning the two cables damaged earlier this week have said it was not yet clear what caused the outages.