There is no evidence that the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3 deliberately sectioned cables in the Baltic Sea, supports a Swedish authority
Nava Yi Peng 3 Photo: Mikkel Berg Pedersen / AFP / Profimedia
The Swedish authority for accident investigation (SHK) announced on Tuesday that there is no evidence that a ship under the Chinese flag has intentionally descended its anchor to section two submarine cables in the Baltic Sea, France Presse reports.
This technical investigation was carried out in parallel with the judicial investigation launched in Sweden for “sabotage”, after the incidents of November 17 and 18, still undergoing investigation.
On November 17, the Telecommunications cable Arelion, which connects the Swedish island Gotland to Lithuania, was damaged. The next day, the C-Lion 1 communications cable, between Finland by Germany, was sectioned south of the Swedish island of Olaand.
In a report published on Tuesday, SHK found that the Yi Peng 3 ship cut two telecommunications cables after lowering its anchor off the southeastern coast of Sweden for a day and a half in November 2024, on a length of 180 nautical miles.
However, SHK said that it is not able to reach the definitive conclusion that the ship, built in 2001 and belonging to the Chinese group Ningbo Yipeng Shipping Co, would have separated the cables.
“There are two possible scenarios for the incident, one of which is that the ship has deliberately thrown the anchor to damage the infrastructure. The argument against this hypothesis is the deliberate risk that represents for the ship to release the high -speed anchor, with a high risk that the vessel will be damaged and the manipulating crew will be injured during the release,” SHK said.
The Swedish authority to investigate accidents emphasizes that it was not authorized to climb on board to examine the anchor of the Yi Peng 3 vessel and to interrogate the crew members until over a month after the accident and that it had no access to any electronic data. These incidents were also investigated by Finland and Germany.
Several communications cables have been damaged in the last year in the Baltic Sea, which led to the opening of investigations in Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Latvia. Suspicions are directed to the so-called “Russian shadow fleet”, made up of ships that Russia uses to bypass the Western sanctions imposed on its oil exports due to the invasion of Ukraine.
NATO and nine countries of the Baltic Sea agreed in mid -January, in Helsinki, to launch a new mission, entitled “Baltic Sentry”, to protect the critical underwater infrastructure with ships, airplanes, naval drones and other means.
