Damage to Baltic Sea telecoms cable may have occurred in January
Finland's telecoms operator said on Monday that the damage reported last week to its C-Lion1 telecoms cable in the Baltic Sea may have occurred as early as Jan. 26, the same day a cargo ship broke another undersea cable in the area.
Swedish and Finnish police said on Friday they were investigating a suspected case of sabotage of the C-Lion1 cable running along the seabed from Finland to Germany, while adding it was not immediately clear when the damage had occurred.
The Baltic Sea region is on alert and the NATO alliance has boosted its presence after a series of power cable, telecom and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Most have been caused by civilian ships dragging their anchors.
Operator Cinia said in an emailed statement on Monday that it believed the damage of the C-Lion1 had occurred on Jan. 26 at 2:37 a.m. Finnish time (00:37 GMT) and that the cause was still unknown.
The time closely coincides with that of an outage of a nearby subsea fiber-optic cable linking Sweden and Latvia, which was reported at the time.
A Swedish prosecutor said on Feb. 3 he had concluded that a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier, the Vezhen, had ruptured the cable linking Sweden and Latvia with its anchor, but that it had been an accident and not sabotage.
The Vezhen passed the Sweden-Latvia cable at 0045 GMT on Jan. 26, MarineTraffic data showed.
Swedish police did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted on Monday.
Bulgarian shipping company Navigation Maritime Bulgare, which lists the Vezhen among its fleet, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
18 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Russia Launches a Major Aerial Attack on Kyiv Hours before High-Level Talks on Support for Ukraine
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Japan Today
12-07-2025
- Japan Today
Six killed in massive Russian drone, missile attack across Ukraine
Moscow has stepped up aerial strikes over recent months as US-led ceasefire talks have stalled Russia fired more than 620 drones and long-range missiles overnight, killing at least six people in the latest wave of strikes, Ukraine said Saturday, adding that it was close to an agreement to receive more Patriot air defense systems. "The Russians continue to use their specific tactics of terror against our country, striking concentrated blows at one city or another, at one region or another," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address. Moscow has stepped up aerial strikes over recent months as U.S.-led ceasefire talks have stalled. "Twenty-six cruise missiles and 597 attack drones were launched, of which more than half were 'Shaheds'," Zelenskyy said, referring to Iranian-made drones. The Ukrainian air force said it had downed 319 Shahed drones and 25 missiles, adding that one missile and about 20 drones had hit "five locations". Zelenskyy said the strikes had killed at least two people and wounded 20 in the southwestern Chernivtsi region, far from the front lines of the east and south. Twelve people were wounded in Lviv, also in the west, while in the east, two people died in Dnipropetrovsk and three were wounded in Kharkiv, local officials said. Russia also "dropped two guided aerial bombs on the homes of civilians" in the northeastern Sumy region killing two, the local prosecutors office said. Zelenskyy said that some of the drones sent by Russia had been "simulators" intended to "overload the air defense system and make it more difficult to shoot down the 'suicide drones'. This is their deliberate and despicable terror." The Russian defense ministry said it had targeted companies in Ukraine's military-industrial complex in Lviv, Kharkiv and Lutsk and a military aerodrome. In a video message, Zelenskyy said "we are close to reaching a multi-level agreement on new Patriot systems and missiles for them". Ukraine was stepping up production of its own interceptor systems, he added. U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg is due to begin his latest visit to Ukraine on Monday as a Washington-led peace effort flounders. U.S. President Donald Trump also said he would make a "major statement... on Russia" on Monday. On Friday, the Kremlin restated its opposition to a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, after French President Emmanuel Macron said Kyiv's allies had a plan "ready to go... in the hours after a ceasefire". Trump called Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last week but said afterwards that there had been no progress towards ending the war. The Kremlin said Putin would not give up on Russia's war goals but would nonetheless continue to take part in negotiations. Moscow says its aim in Ukraine is to get rid of the "root causes" of the conflict and has demanded that Kyiv give up its NATO ambitions. Washington's announcement earlier this month that it would pause some armament deliveries to Ukraine was a blow to Kyiv, which is reliant on Western military support. On Saturday, Zelenskyy urged his Western allies to send "more than just signals" to stop the war launched by Russia in February 2022. "The pace of Russian air strikes requires swift decisions and it can be curbed right now through sanctions," he said on social media. Zelenskyy specifically demanded penalties for those who "help Russia produce drones and profit from oil". Oil exports are important for the Russian economy especially in the face of existing Western sanctions. Sanctions imposed on Russia -- the world's largest fertilizer producer -- after the invasion spared its grain and fertilizer exports. But prices skyrocketed, fueling fears of food insecurity. The United Nations signed a deal with Russia in July 2022 to facilitate exports of food and fertilizer to limit global price increases. But on Friday, it said the accord would not be renewed when it expires on July 22. Russia has repeatedly complained the agreement does little to protect it from secondary sanction effects. © 2025 AFP
Yomiuri Shimbun
10-07-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Russia Batters Ukraine with More Than 700 Drones, the Largest Barrage of the War, Officials Say
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired more than 700 attack and decoy drones at Ukraine overnight, topping previous nightly barrages for the third time in two weeks as Moscow intensifies its aerial and ground assault in the three-year war, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. Russia has recently sought to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses by launching major attacks that include increasing numbers of decoy drones. The most recent one appeared aimed at disrupting Ukraine's vital supply of Western weapons. Lutsk, a city that's home to airfields used by the Ukrainian army, was the hardest hit, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It lies near the border with Poland in western Ukraine, a region that is a crucial hub for receiving foreign military aid. The attack comes at a time of increased uncertainty over the supply of crucial American weapons and as U.S.-led peace efforts have stalled. Zelenskyy said that the Kremlin was 'making a point' with its barrage. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces took aim at Ukrainian air bases and that 'all the designated targets have been hit.' Meanwhile, Ukraine fired drones into Russia overnight, killing three people in the Kursk border region, including a 5-year-old boy, the local governor said. The Russian attack, which included 728 drones and 13 missiles, had the largest number of drones fired in a single night in the war. On Friday, Russia fired 550 drones, less than a week after it launched 477, both the largest at the time, officials said. Beyond Lutsk, 10 regions were struck. One person was killed in the Khmelnytskyi region, and two wounded in the Kyiv region, officials said. Poland, a member of NATO, scrambled its fighter jets and put its armed forces on the highest level of alert in response to the attack, the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command wrote in an X post. Russia's bigger army has also launched a new drive to punch through parts of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where short-handed Ukrainian forces are under heavy strain. Trump says the US must send more weapons to Ukraine U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was 'not happy' with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hasn't budged from his ceasefire and peace demands since Trump took office in January and began to push for a settlement. Trump said Monday that the U.S. would have to send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after Washington paused critical weapons deliveries to Kyiv. On Wednesday, the U.S. resumed deliveries of certain weapons, including 155 mm munitions and precision-guided rockets known as GMLRS, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity so they could provide details that hadn't been announced publicly. It's unclear exactly when the weapons started moving. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump 'has quite a tough style in terms of the phrasing he uses,' adding that Moscow hopes to 'continue our dialogue with Washington and our course aimed at repairing the badly damaged bilateral ties.' Zelenskyy, meanwhile, urged Ukraine's partners to impose stricter sanctions on Russian oil and those who help finance the Kremlin's war by buying it. 'Everyone who wants peace must act,' Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian leader met Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday during a visit to Italy ahead of an international conference on rebuilding Ukraine. Both Russia and Ukraine look to build more drones Ukraine's air defenses shot down 296 drones and seven missiles during the overnight attack, while 415 more drones were lost from radars or jammed, an air force statement said. Ukrainian interceptor drones, developed to counter the Shahed ones fired by Russia, are increasingly effective, Zelenskyy said, adding that domestic production of anti-aircraft drones is being scaled up in partnership with some Western countries. Western military analysts say Russia is also boosting its drone manufacturing and could soon be capable of launching 1,000 a night at Ukraine. 'Russia continues to expand its domestic drone production capacity amid the ever-growing role of tactical drones in front-line combat operations and Russia's increasingly large nightly long-range strike packages against Ukraine,' the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said late Tuesday. Ukraine has also built up its own offensive drone threat, reaching deep into Russia with some long-range strikes. Russia's Defense Ministry said Wednesday that air defenses downed 86 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions overnight, including the Moscow region. Flights were temporarily suspended at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and the international airport of Kaluga, south of Moscow. The governor of Russia's Kursk border region, Alexander Khinshtein, said a Ukrainian drone attack on the region's capital city just before midnight killed three people and wounded seven others, including the 5-year-old boy who died on the way to a hospital. Meanwhile, Europe's top human rights court ruled Wednesday that Russia had violated international law during the war in Ukraine, the first time an international court has found Moscow responsible for human rights abuses since the full-scale invasion in 2022. The court also ruled Russia was behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the first time Moscow was named by an international court as being responsible for the 2014 tragedy that claimed 298 lives. Any decision is largely symbolic.
