State-sponsored cable cutting ‘an attractive option’ for Russia and China

CABLE cutting by commercial vessels closely linked to Russia and China has dominated shipping headlines in 2025, and a new report by security think tank Insikt Group suggests this threat could escalate further in the near future.

“We assess that Russian and Chinese state-sponsored sabotage of submarine cables via commercial vessels will likely remain an attractive option for targeting perceived adversaries’ critical infrastructure below the threshold of kinetic conflict as geopolitical tensions rise, aligning with both Moscow’s and Beijing’s observed “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone” tactics,” the report said.

A total of nine separate incidents in the Baltic Sea and the seas surrounding Taiwan were identified by the report between 2024 and 2025, four of which it said involved vessels linked to Russia or China.

Among the most high-profile cases was Yi Peng 3 (IMO: 9224984), which was suspected of damaging the C-Lion cable that connects Finland and Germany on November 18, 2024. The China-flagged bulk carrier remained anchored in international waters off Denmark for five weeks before finally departing.

That was followed by Eagle S (IMO: 9329760), which was detained by Finnish authorities on December 25, 2024, on suspicion of damaging the Estlink 2 cable between Finland and Estonia.

In Taiwan, Lloyd’s List was able to prove that one vessel, known as Xing Shun 39, was using three separate digital identities when it damaged part of the Trans Pacific Express cable system that connects Taiwan with the US West Coast in January 2025, while Taiwan convicted a Chinese master of Hongtai 58 of damaging the Taiwan-Penghu cable in February 2025.

Accidents continue to cause the majority of day-to-day disruptions to undersea cables, the report said, but incidents in the past 12 months have shown that undersea infrastructure is very vulnerable to anchor dragging by commercial vessels.

States can use this “low-sophistication” tactic to target the infrastructure of opposing nations while retaining some plausible deniability, the report said.

In the case of Russia, that means disrupting Nato-owned assets in the Baltic Sea as part of its hybrid warfare doctrine, which seeks to destabilise adversaries, while stopping short of all out war.

For China, the scope appears more focussed. Its efforts appear to be centred around what Insikt called “coercive activities towards Taiwan”.

“Specifically, China’s preparations for a potential military incursion into Taiwan and the deterioration of US-China bilateral relations very likely incentivise physical attacks and intelligence collection efforts targeting the submarine cable system to undermine the economic, diplomatic, and security objectives of the US and its allies.”

The cases involving commercial vessels usually occur in shallower waters, which means the cable is easier to damage but is also easier to repair.

Only a handful of nations have access to the technology required to access deepwater cables, the report said. Of more concern are so-called cable landing stations: single points where multiple cables join land.

These are much more accessible and an attack on one site could affect several different cables all with their own function.

A 2023 report by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) called landing stations “a weak point” and stressed that repairing damage to them is a “complex and difficult, lengthy operation”.

“Repair is also highly dependent on the availability of specialised and dedicated repair ships, of which there is only a limited number worldwide”, the ENISA report said.

Repair capacity continues to lag behind the rate of expansion of subsea infrastructure, the Insikt report said. Most specialist vessels are tasked with laying new cables, which limits the number of resources available to respond quickly to an incident.

“Unless significant investments are made in streamlining repair processes and expanding cable ship repair capacity, repair times are likely to continue trending upward”, north of the current 40-day average, the report suggested.

This problem isn’t going to go away, either.

“Such campaigns attributed to Russia in the North Atlantic–Baltic region and China in the western Pacific are likely to increase in frequency as tensions rise, leveraging deniable tactics in both shallow and deep water to apply political pressure without overt escalation,” the report said.