Mystery behind Baltic undersea cables and Chinese cargo ship with Russian captain

Undersea cables accidents in the Baltic Sea, where the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up two years ago can hardly be called advantageous for any of the Baltic countries.

Photo: unsplash.com by Thierry Meier, PDM

An underwater cable was ruptured between Lithuania and Sweden on November 17. Another cable was damaged on November 18 between Germany and Finland. This is not the first time when underwater cables like Estlink-1 (between Estonia and Finland) come out of order. The cables connect Scandinavian and Northern European countries. Last year, the Balticonnector gas pipeline was damaged between Estonia and Finland.

Shortly before the latest accidents, European media outlets were hyping the topic of the alleged danger of Russian ships near those cables. The European authorities, particularly the authorities of Denmark and Finland, allegedly want to stop Russian vessels (i.e. "shadow fleet") from passing through the waters of the Baltic Sea.

The Baltic Sea is literally stuffed with various systems of communications. Until recently, this fact was not a big problem for shipping. Reports of energy cables accidents have become more frequent in the last 5-10 years, when the Scandinavian countries started building new communications to the Baltic republics on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Two cables were disrupted in November in one week. On November 17, Lithuanian operator Telia reported that there was a disruption in communications between Lithuania with Sweden. It was later said that the undersea communication cable was severed. Telia's Internet bandwidth in Lithuania dropped by a third after the accident as traffic goes through three cables.

On November 18, it became known that the C-Lion1 telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany was damaged as well. The cable (1,200 km long between the German port city of Rostock and Helsinki) will be repaired within two weeks, Finnish communications agency Trafico said.

The two cables intersect over an area of ​​only 10 square meters. If the rupture had taken place in another location, then the damage would have been caused only to one communication line. The fact that the cables were damaged in the right location suggests that someone wanted that to happen.

A Chinese vessel is believed to be the culprit. German publication Bild blamed a Russian citizen for the accident.

The Chinese cargo ship Yi Peng 3 could damage the cable as the ship was moving along a strange route. The captain of the ship is Russian, Bild said.

According to The Financial Times that referred to marine tracking group MarineTraffic, the ship, which was traveling from the Russian port of Ust-Luga to Port Said in Egypt, passed near the Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German cables at about the time when each of those cable was cut on Sunday and Monday.

The Finnish Central Criminal Police opened a criminal investigation into the rupture of the only telecommunications cable between Germany and Finland — C-Lion1.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called the cable accident an act of sabotage without providing any evidence. No one believes that the cables were cut accidentally.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that the accident may have occurred either intentionally or through negligence.