An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, triggering an investigation by local and NATO maritime forces in the Baltic Sea.

NATO is deploying eyes in the sky and on the Baltic Sea to protect cables and pipelines that stitch together the nine countries with shores on Baltic waters.

The undersea cable is based in the Baltic Sea, and may have been deliberately damaged on Sunday, according to officials in Sweden.

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 earlier that day.

Subsea cables are especially vulnerable to sabotage or even exploitation, as they are extremely long, difficult to monitor, and unprotected against a determined adversary. If nothing else, these events should alert governments and private-sector providers that the seabed is no longer insulated from malign actors.

Swedish authorities have seized a ship over the “aggravated sabotage” of an undersea fibre-optic cable linking Latvia with a strategically important island in Sweden.

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.

The Baltic Sea has seen multiple cases of severed telecom and power cables in recent months. In these cases, experts and Western officials have accused Russia of engaging in a “hybrid war” by targetin

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys has called for a review of the current regulations for shipping, following the most recent incident of damage to an undersea cable. "Navigation rules in the Baltic Sea need to be reviewed,