Another crime in the Baltic Sea with Russia being considered as a possible main suspect. After two deep-sea cables on the seabed were damaged on Monday, Denmark is now said to have detained a Chinese cargo ship – the captain of which is said to be from Russia.
Is this an attack on European infrastructure in the spirit of ‘hybrid warfare’ by Russia? The German Defense Minister assumes that the damage to the two communications cables in the Baltic Sea was caused by “sabotage”. “No one believes these cables were accidentally cut,” he said.
The main suspect has now been identified
One of the affected fiber optic cables runs between Helsinki and Rostock and, like a kind of information highway on the seabed, connects data centers in Central and Northern Europe. To date, there have been no major disruptions to users’ internet connections or data traffic.
And there is already a main suspect: the Chinese-flagged cargo ship ‘Yi Peng 3’ is said to have been sailing near the cables at the time of the damage. As Danish media report, the radio signal used to identify the ship (AIS signal) suddenly disappeared.
The ship would have already been followed
Sweden’s Minister of Civil Protection, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, also reported noticeable ship movements that coincided in time and space with the onset of the damage. In China they don’t want to know anything about it: they attach great importance to protecting the underwater infrastructure, and they dismissed the allegations on Wednesday.
NATO countries have probably already responded. As Swedish radio station SVT reported, the ship arriving from a Russian oil port was said to be “overshadowed” by several naval vessels. Specifically, we are talking about various patrol ships of the Danish Navy.
Ship movements provide explosive information
Polish media even report that the cargo ship has been arrested by the Danes and that the ship’s captain is from Russia. Denmark would have exercised its right under Article X of the Submarine Cable Treaty. This had only happened once before, in 1959 by the US.
However, this has not yet been officially confirmed. However, ship movements showed that at least two Danish military ships were near the “Yi Peng 3” south of the small island of Anholt on Wednesday. The Chinese ship was therefore at anchor.
The Danish Ministry of Defense announced via short message service X (formerly Twitter) that it was present in the vicinity of the “Yi Peng 3”. However, there has been no further comment on the incident.
Special ship now has to repair cables again
According to the Finnish public broadcaster, the place where the cable was cut between the Swedish island of Öland and Lithuania is in the middle of a Swedish special economic zone. There is little shipping traffic there. Neither the Finnish state network Cinia nor the police currently have any idea how the defect in the fiber optic cable “Cinia C-Lion1” in the Baltic Sea occurred.
The damage caused disruptions to several telecommunications services, Cinia said on Monday. A special ship is now en route from Calais, France, to repair the cable. The work could take between five and 15 days because the cable had to be brought in from the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Finnish radio said.
Source: Krone
I am Wallace Jones, an experienced journalist. I specialize in writing for the world section of Today Times Live. With over a decade of experience, I have developed an eye for detail when it comes to reporting on local and global stories. My passion lies in uncovering the truth through my investigative skills and creating thought-provoking content that resonates with readers worldwide.
