Yi Peng Three left the port of Ustruga, west of St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 15.
Early on November 17, the Arellion cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania was damaged.
The next day, the C-Lion 1 cable connecting the Finnish capital Helsinki and the German port of Rostock was cut.
Data from a ship tracking website showed that the Yi Peng Three sailed on the cable around the time it was cut.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), investigators suspect the ship intentionally damaged the cable., external Simply drop the anchor and drag it along the seafloor for more than 160 kilometers (100 miles).
The ship has been in the Kattegat Strait, the passage between Sweden and Denmark that connects the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, since November 19 and is under surveillance by the Danish Navy.
“We have sent an official request to China to cooperate with Swedish authorities to clarify what happened,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said at a press conference that day.
“I think it’s very important to find out exactly what happened, and of course we expect China to respond to our requests,” he said.
He also repeated previous requests for the ship to be moved back to Swedish waters so it could be searched as part of the investigation, but added that no “accusations” of any kind were made.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tensions in the Baltic Sea have increased and a number of incidents have occurred involving damage to undersea infrastructure.
In September 2022, serial explosions ruptured holes in two Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Western Europe and Russia, and in October 2023, an undersea communications cable connecting Estonia and Sweden was damaged.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said of the incident in a speech last week that “no one believes that this cable was accidentally cut,” but did not specify who was responsible.
Russia rejected the proposal, calling it “absurd” and “laughable.”
