Captain is Russian

Cut cables: freighter from China detained?

The world is watching the "Yi Peng 3" - the ship arrived from a Russian oil port just before it entered the affected region.(Bild: APA/AFP/Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa)

Yet another crime story in the Baltic Sea in which Russia is considered a possible prime suspect. After two deep-sea cables were damaged on the seabed on Monday, Denmark is now said to have detained a Chinese cargo ship - whose captain is believed to be from Russia.

Is this an attack on European infrastructure in the sense of "hybrid warfare" by Russia? In any case, the German defense minister assumes that the damage to the two communication cables in the Baltic Sea was "sabotage". "Nobody believes that these cables were cut by mistake," said the minister.

Concrete prime suspect already identified
One of the affected fiber optic cables runs between Helsinki and Rostock and connects data centers in Central and Northern Europe as a kind of data highway on the seabed. There have been no major disruptions to users' internet connections or data traffic so far.

And there is already a prime suspect: The Chinese-flagged freighter "Yi Peng 3" is said to have been sailing near the cables at the time of the damage. According to Danish media reports, the ship's radio identification signal (AIS signal) suddenly disappeared.

Ship is said to have already been shadowed
The Swedish Minister for Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, also reported conspicuous ship movements that coincided in time and space with the occurrence of the damage. China does not want to know anything about this: They attach great importance to the protection of underwater infrastructure, they said on Wednesday, wiping the accusations off the table.

However, the NATO countries are likely to have already reacted. As reported by the Swedish radio station SVT, the ship coming from a Russian oil port is said to have been "shadowed" by several naval vessels. Specifically, there is talk of several patrol ships from the Danish navy.

Ship movements provide explosive clues
Polish media even report that the freighter is said to have been detained by the Danes; the captain of the ship is said to be from Russia. Denmark is said to have exercised its right under Article X of the Submarine Cable Convention. This had only happened once before, in 1959 by the USA.

However, this has not yet been officially confirmed. However, ship movements showed that at least two Danish military vessels were in the immediate vicinity of the "Yi Peng 3" south of the small island of Anholt on Wednesday. The Chinese ship was reportedly at anchor.

The Danish Ministry of Defense explained via the short message service X (formerly Twitter) that it was present in the vicinity of the "Yi Peng 3". However, they have not yet commented on the incident.

Special ship now to repair cable
According to Finnish public radio, the location where the cable was severed lies between the Swedish island of Öland and Lithuania, directly in a Swedish special economic zone. Shipping traffic there is rather low. Neither the Finnish state operator network Cinia nor the police currently have any clue as to how the defect in the Baltic Sea fiber optic cable "Cinia C-Lion1" occurred.

The damage had caused disruptions to various telecommunications services, Cinia announced on Monday. A special ship from Calais in France is now on its way to repair the cable. The work could take between five and 15 days, as the cable has to be retrieved from the bottom of the Baltic Sea, according to Finnish radio.