Baltic: one month after the cutting of two cables, the Yi Peng 3 remains immobile

The Yi Peng 3 is still stationary in Kattegat. One month after the incidents that occurred on two cables (Arelion and C-Lion1), on November 17 and 18, which led the Danish navy to stop the 225 meter long Chinese bulk carrier, on November 19. It is still guarded by military means from the neighboring countries. While on Monday December 16, two German ships were anchored nearby, on Wednesday December 18, it was a Danish ship which monitored the Chinese ship suspected of sabotage. For weeks, no official information has filtered out on the ongoing investigation.

China has said it wants to cooperate with investigators, but none of them were able to board the Yi Peng 3, despite requests from Germany and Denmark. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which cites sources from Western intelligence services, the Russian secret services “encouraged” the Chinese captain to carry out the sabotage by leaving an anchor lying on the seabed.

Questioned during a summit in Tallinn, Finnish President Alexander Stubb was circumspect, according to Yle, the national public broadcaster. “We are still trying to understand what happened. For now, discussions are underway with the Chinese, Danes, Swedes and others. But, at least at this point, we cannot verify Russian involvement in any way,” he said, adding, after commenting on unconfirmed reports of an exchange between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, that “sometimes the information is correct, sometimes it is false”.

Both cables were returned to service at the end of November. The repair work on the C-Lion1 cable between Finland and Germany was carried out by the Cable Vigilance, an Optic Marine Service vessel, operated by Louis Dreyfus Armateurs. Cinia, operator of C-Lion1, said the outage had caused little disruption to its customers, thanks to the transfer of traffic to other routes and a rapid repair.