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Agency Report –
Helsinki – NATO announced a new mission on Tuesday to better protect critical underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea with significantly more ships, aircraft and drones, as concerns about Russian aggression in the region grow.
“Today I can announce that NATO is launching Baltic Sentry,” said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the summit of alliance members that surround the Baltic Sea.
“This military activity is part of our ongoing effort to enhance maritime presence and monitoring of key areas for our alliance,” Rutte said in Helsinki.
The secretary general also named an initiative to utilize new technologies as part of the efforts. This includes a small fleet of naval drones to ensure improved surveillance of key energy and communication cables that stretch across the sea.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended the meeting, said Germany will join the new mission.
Germany was prepared to assume responsibility “with its own resources” in view of the threat, he said.
“Of course, this means that we will also ensure security in the Baltic Sea with German ships,” he added.
The two newest NATO members, Finland and Sweden, previously announced that they will be participating with ships. Estonia already has a naval vessel patrolling the Gulf of Finland.
With the new mission, the eight NATO countries on the Baltic Sea – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden – are seeking to deter deliberate acts of damage to infrastructure in the sea.
Scholz called the incidents a “very serious matter.”
In the latest of a spate of incidents, the oil tanker Eagle S is suspected of having intentionally damaged a power line and several communication cables by dragging its anchor on the seabed.
Finnish authorities have seized the vessel.
The EU says the tanker belongs to the Russian “shadow fleet.”
This refers to tankers and other cargo ships, often ageing vessels in poor condition and with opaque ownership structures, that Moscow uses to export oil and other commodities despite sanctions imposed as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.
China, North Korea and Iran are also accused of wanting to weaken European countries with so-called hybrid attacks which aim to inflict harm on another country without waging open warfare. These acts are often difficult or impossible to attribute to a specific initiator.
By dpa correspondents
