Journal on Baltic Security

Suspected sabotage to submarine communication cables (SCCs) across the world has raised questions about the resilience of these systems. Data communication networks typically use a network approach, which spreads the networks’ capacity across diverse routes to provide redundancy. This study takes a risk mitigation and resilience perspective by investigating the information needed to support proactive rerouting decision-making. This study reveals that appropriate situational awareness is dependent on specific, real-time information about hazards and threats to the cable in question. For an operator of an SCC, such a contribution is not possible without being interpreted as an integral stakeholder in defence.

Poland’s rapid expansion of offshore wind farms (OWFs) in the Baltic Sea elevates them to the status of critical infrastructure central to energy security. This article examines the legal responsibilities, institutional arrangements, and operational challenges in protecting OWFs against hybrid threats such as sabotage, espionage, and cyberattacks. It analyses national frameworks, EU directives (CER and NIS2), and the roles of the Navy, Border Guard, Maritime Offices, Government Centre for Security (RCB), and private operators. This work offers a responsibility matrix which highlights both institutional overlaps as well as gaps. The article concludes with recommendations for legal reforms, capability development, and inter-agency coordination to strengthen Poland’s offshore wind infrastructure.

This article examines vulnerabilities in Sweden’s logistics and infrastructure systems within the total defence framework and considers which lessons from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine may inform efforts to strengthen national resilience. Using qualitative analysis of policy documents, infrastructure disruptions, and Ukraine’s wartime experiences, the study conceptualises logistics as a strategic capability linking civilian infrastructure and military operations. The findings identify vulnerabilities in fragmented coordination structures, transport capacity constraints, and insufficient infrastructure repair capability. Ukraine’s experience highlights the importance of redundancy, decentralised repair capacity, and adaptive civil-military cooperation for maintaining logistical functionality under conditions of sustained disruption.

Based on a review of over sixty publications, this article develops a research agenda for the study of contemporary total defence. Despite renewed policy relevance, the literature remains fragmented across national traditions, sectors, and levels of analysis. To address this gap, the article applies a multilevel-governance perspective and develops an integrated analytical framework for comparative research. It conceptualises total defence across four dimensions – domestic vertical governance, transnational linkages, cross-sectoral coordination, and horizontal state-society relations – thus providing a coherent basis for future scholarship while remaining open to diverse theoretical approaches.

The Russo-Ukrainian war, that was forecasted by some experts to last merely a few days, is already into its 5th year. Mounting evidence conveys that Russia started the invasion of Ukraine by ignoring all of the concepts it had been advocating and implementing since the beginning of its military reform in 2008. The war has demonstrated several essential changes in the battlefield operations, war-waging practices, recruitment of troops, and force structures.