COPENHAGEN, November 22 ------ Denmark's navy said that it was shadowing a Chinese cargo vessel that was stopped off the Danish coast, a day after Finland and Sweden opened investigations into the suspected sabotage of two undersea telecommunications cables.
The cutting of the two cables within 48 hours prompted European officials to say on Tuesday that they suspect "sabotage" and "hybrid warfare" linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin on Wednesday rejected their claim as "absurd" and "laughable." The C-Lion 1 submarine cable connecting Helsinki and the German port of Rostock was cut on Monday south of Oland island in Swedish waters, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) from Finland's capital.
Early on Sunday, another cable, Arelion, which runs from the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland to Lithuania, was also damaged. "The Danish Defense can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3," the military wrote in an email to Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that it would make no further comment for now. The cargo ship, owned by Chinese company Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, stopped overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and southwestern Sweden, according to the tracking site Marinetraffic. The tracker also showed that the Yi Peng 3 had on Monday been in the area of the C-Lion 1 cable when it was damaged, though there is nothing to indicate it was involved in the incident.
According to specialized site VesselFinder, the Yi Peng 3 left the Russian port of Ust-Luga, west of Saint Petersburg, on Nov. 15. Swedish police also said on Wednesday that they were interested in a ship that had been observed in the vicinity of the cables. They did not specify which ship they were referring to, other than saying it "was currently not in Swedish waters."
Lin Jian, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday that he was not aware of the situation but that "China has consistently and fully fulfilled its obligations as a flag state and requires Chinese vessels to strictly abide by the relevant laws and regulations."
On Tuesday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the severed cables were likely the result of "sabotage." "Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed," he said on the sidelines of a meeting of European Union ministers in Belgium's capital Brussels. The prime ministers of Denmark and Sweden echoed that sentiment on Wednesday. "We are closely following what the relevant authorities are saying, and I wouldn't be surprised if it is an external actor that has carried out sabotage," Danish premier Mette Frederiksen told news agency Ritzau.
Source: manilatimes.net
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