Swedish police focus on Chinese ship after suspected undersea cable sabotage | Sweden

Swedish police investigating the suspected sabotage of two undersea fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea have said a Chinese ship off the coast of Denmark was “of interest” as Danish officials said its fleet was shadowing a Chinese-registered cargo ship.

The ship, identified by Denmark as the Yi Peng 3, passed the two cables on Sunday and Monday around the time they are believed to have been severed in a suspected malicious attack. The ship has been overshadowed by a Danish naval vessel since it was in waters between Sweden and Denmark.

The Danish Defense Command said: “The Danish Defense can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3. The Danish Defense currently has no further comment.”

Swedish officials have confirmed that they are interested in the ship, but have not given further details.

Specialist Swedish underwater search teams were at the site of the Finnish-German cable – one of two undersea fiber optic cables that were damaged – on Wednesday, collecting evidence for Swedish investigators. A cable between Sweden and Lithuania was also damaged.

Swedish police said a Chinese ship off the coast of Denmark was among those they were watching. Per Engström of Sweden’s national operations department said: “It is part of the sphere of interest, but there may be more.”

He said the Swedish coast guard is helping with “increased surveillance around the relevant areas”, adding: “We are ready to take investigative measures to get a clearer picture of what may have happened.”

Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “China has consistently and fully fulfilled its obligations as a flag state and requires Chinese vessels to strictly comply with the relevant laws and regulations.”

The Swedish navy previously said it had an “almost 100% identification” of the ships that were in the area of ​​the two cable breaks.

According to Vesselfinder tracking data, the cargo ship, which is owned by Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company registered in Ningbo, last visited a port on November 15 in Ust-Luga in western Russia, close to the border with Estonia.

It stopped overnight Tuesday to Wednesday in the Kattegat Strait between Denmark and Sweden.

The route to Yi Peng 3

Russian maritime pilot Alexander Stechentsev, who had boarded the ship to guide it out of port, said there was nothing unusual about the ship. The Ust-Luga Port Authority employee said he took the ship to a receiving buoy located 11 miles offshore before disembarking. He described the Yi Peng 3 vessel as “a standard 225-meter bulk carrier” with a crew of Chinese nationals.

He said: “There was absolutely nothing unusual about the ship.”

A Russian maritime database confirms that he left the Yi Peng 3 vessel on the afternoon of November 15.

Russia has denied any involvement in the cable incidents. On Wednesday, the Kremlin said such accusations were ridiculous and that it was absurd to accuse Russia without evidence.

Sweden and Finland are jointly investigating the incidents as potential sabotage, with Sweden leading the investigation.

The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, said on Wednesday: “We assume that this may very well be sabotage, but we don’t know anything yet. The broken cables must be carefully investigated, both by the police and internationally. We have seen sabotage before, so we takes it very seriously.”

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Investigators in Sweden analyzed any potential role of the Chinese ship, but the Swedish government did not comment on this. A government source said information about the incident was “moving very quickly”.

Last year, it emerged that the anchor of another Chinese vessel, the container ship Newnew Polar Bear, had damaged a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia. Authorities have not said whether they believe the incident was intentional or accidental.

Overnight, the Swedish navy used unmanned, remote-controlled submarines to survey the southern location of the two cables, but said it would take “several days” because of the challenges of expected bad weather and the potential for poor visibility.

Jimmie Adamsson, a spokesman for the Swedish navy, said the navy had been asked to support the Swedish prosecutor and police with their investigations and that ships were dispatched immediately. They have been asked to collect evidence at the sites of the two breaks – one 100-150 meters deep (Sweden-Lithuania cable) and the other 20-40 meters deep (Finland-Germany cable). They have also been asked to put together a picture of which vessels were there and at what time.

The navy’s crew, which is trained to search underwater, has twice previously carried out similar tasks during the investigation of the suspected sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022.

Adamsson said: “Yesterday (Tuesday) a pair of naval ships left the Swedish ports and went to the southernmost point of the two. They have been working all night into the morning. There was some rough weather.”

At any given time, there are around 4,000 large vessels in the Baltic Sea passing over a network of undersea cables that carry data, electricity and gas across Europe.

The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said that she was “not surprised” by the potential for sabotage. “If the immediate assessment is that it is sabotage and it comes from outside, then of course it is serious. I’m not surprised that it could happen,” she said.

Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, has already said he assumed the act was sabotage. “No one believes that the cables have been damaged by accident,” he said.

Sweden’s Minister of Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, quickly made the connection between the movement of ships and the severed cables. “There are ship movements that correspond to this crime on maritime surveillance,” he said.

The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) said it was “too early to assess the cause of the cable damage”, but it was supporting other authorities with their expertise. It said about 200 undersea cable breaks occurred each year, the most common cause being human activities such as fishing or anchoring.