Nato is helping find out if Russia or China deliberately cut Baltic allies' telecoms cables, in order to cause fear of how a new world war might begin.
The Western alarm comes after the C-Lion1 telecommunications cable from Finland to Germany and the BCS East-West Interlink cable from Lithuania to Sweden suddenly went dark on 17 and 18 November.
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Already a member? Login hereAndrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.