"There still are no concrete findings or a diagnosis what happened here. Let us wait a little bit and we will find out," said Kasčiūnas.
According to him, if it is determined that an authoritarian country is behind the incident, which was planned it advance and then carried out, then Lithuania should consider measures how to respond to such cases.
"This could be a long list of civilian measures, starting with naval navigation at sea and so on," he said.
The minister stressed that not only undersea telecommunications cables were severed, but recently incendiary devices were sent by air and that there were other attempts at provocations. According to him, when there is evidence, it should be acknowledged that authoritarian countries are behind the sabotage and then a response has to be planned.
"Other countries, even being aware that some sort of sabotage, terror acts may happen domestically, still do not link this to some external source, do not speak about this or simply claim that it is an incident of local significance," said Kasčiūnas.
According to him, authoritarians, aggressors and „geopolitical hooligans“, who know that NATO is a defensive alliance, are pushing the boundaries and testing where is the line between NATO’s de-escalation and a response.
As reported, last week undersea telecommunications cables between Sweden and Lithuania, and Finland and Germany were cut. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that the incident could be treated as sabotage. Financial Times reported that the cables might have been severed by the vessel Yi Peng 3, sailing under the Chinese flag.