The operations of two subsea cables running across the Baltic Sea — the C-Lion1 subsea cable connecting Finland and Germany and the nearby BCS East-West Interlink cable linking Lithuania to the Swedish island of Gotland — were disrupted apparently due to physical damage, Reuters reported on Nov. 18. A joint statement from the foreign ministries of Finland and Germany raised the possibility of deliberate damage, while German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius separately said he "assumed" the outage was an act of sabotage.