A submarine cable was damaged in the Baltic Sea, the fourth case reported by the Nordic countries in the past two months. View on euronews

After a fiber optic cable was damaged near Sweden, Latvia sent a patrol boat to inspect a suspicious vessel in the Baltic Sea. Sweden later said it seized a vessel believed to have carried out the sabotage.

The Nordic country has opened an investigation into the damage, just weeks after NATO stepped up its military presence in the area following a series of similar incidents.

Swedish authorities boarded a vessel suspected of being involved in an earlier underwater sabotage of cables in the Baltic Sea on Monday.

Sweden has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected aggravated “sabotage” and ordered the detention of a vessel in the Baltic Sea suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland

The Arelion submarine cable, which connects the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania, and the C-Lion 1 submarine communications cable that runs between Finland's capital Helsinki and the German city of Rostock were also damaged in mid-November near Sweden's territorial waters.

Sweden's coastguard has intercepted a Bulgarian ship after fiber optic cables between Sweden and Latvia were damaged. Suspected sabotage of such undersea links in the Baltic Sea has been blamed on Russia.

A subsea data cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged early Sunday, sparking a criminal investigation, a third such incident in the Baltic Sea in the past three months.

In 2023, Mads Petersen, owner of Greenland-based startup Arctic Unmanned, sat in a car to keep warm while he tested a small drone at minus 43 degrees Celsius (minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit). The cold soon drained the drone's power.

Latvia said it had dispatched a warship on Sunday after damage to a fibre optic cable to Sweden that may have been "due to external factors".

Several undersea cables running under the surface of the Baltic Sea have been damaged in suspected sabotage incidents in recent months.