Sweden reported damage to another submarine cable in the Baltic

Another submarine cable connecting Sweden, Lithuania, Germany and Finland was damaged in the Baltic Sea. This was announced by the Minister of Civil Defense of Sweden Karl-Oscar Bolin, reports SVT.

The defense ministry of the kingdom linked the incident to the Chinese vessel Yi Peng, which at the time when the cable was damaged was allegedly anchored 160 km from the coast.

"Today we can tell you that it has been established that there are traces of dragging from the anchor, probably from (exposure) to Yi Peng," the minister said.

In November, Yi Peng 3 was suspected of cutting two of the most important communication cables in the Baltic Sea: the Swedish authorities believe that the ship could have damaged their anchor.

We are talking about damage to underwater communication lines between Lithuania and Sweden (BCS East-West Interlink) and between Finland and Germany (C-Lion1) on November 17 and 18. Sweden, Finland and Germany have launched an investigation into the incident.

The fact that European investigators suspect that the Yi Peng 3 crew deliberately damaged two submarine cables in the Baltic Sea was reported by The Wall Street Journal newspaper at the end of November. According to their version, the captain deliberately damaged the C-Lion1 cable, which has a length of about 1.2 thousand km and goes from Helsinki to the German port city of Rostock, using an anchor at the request of Russian intelligence. The BCS East-West Interlink is laid between Lithuania and Sweden, its damage became known on the same day — the cable has an intersection with C-Lion1.

Bild reported that the captain of the cargo ship is a Russian citizen, however, according to the WSJ, the captain is a Chinese citizen. At the same time, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service noted that it was too early to talk about the causes of the incident, pointing out that about 200 submarine cable breaks occur annually in the world.

Sweden urged China to send the ship back to the country so that the authorities could "find out what happened." China allowed investigators from the EU to board the ship when it was anchored, RBC reminds.