COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s navy said on Wednesday that it was shadowing a Chinese cargo vessel that was stopped off the Danish coast, a day after Finland and Sweden opened investigations into suspected sabotage of two undersea telecoms 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 — which the Kremlin on Wednesday rejected 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, around 700 kilometres from Helsinki.

Early Sunday, another telecoms cable, Arelion, running from the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland to Lithuania, was also damaged. “The Danish Defence can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3,” the military wrote in an email.

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 that it was involved in the incident.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2024