Sweden criticises China for refusing full access to vessel suspected of Baltic Sea cable sabotage

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Sweden has sharply criticized China for refusing to allow the Nordic country’s chief investigator on board a Chinese vessel suspected of severing two cables in the Baltic Sea.

The Yi Peng 3 sailed away from its mooring in international waters between Denmark and Sweden Saturday, and Chinese investigators appear to be heading to Egypt after boarding the ship on Thursday.

The Chinese team allowed representatives from Sweden, Germany, Finland and Denmark on board as observers, but did not allow Swedish public prosecutor Henrik Soderman to enter, according to authorities in Stockholm.

“This is something that the government inherently takes seriously. It is noteworthy that the ship left without the prosecutor being given the opportunity to inspect the ship and question the crew within the framework of the Swedish criminal investigation,” Foreign Minister Maria Malmö Stenergaard said in comments to the Financial Times.

The Swedish government was Putting pressure on the Chinese authorities Bulk carriers to move out of international waters into Swedish territory to allow a full investigation into the severing of Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German data cables last month.

People close to the investigation said Thursday’s boarding of the ship showed no suspicion of involvement in the incident.

Yi Peng 3 belongs to Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company that owns only one other vessel and is based near the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo. A representative for Ningbo Yipeng told the FT in November that “the government has asked the company to cooperate with the investigation”, but did not respond to further questions.

Countries are divided on the motivation behind wire cutting. Some people close to the investigation said they believed it was foul sailing that could have dragged the Yi Peng 3’s anchor along the seabed in the Baltic Sea.

However, other governments have privately said they suspect Russia was behind the damage and paid the ship’s crew.

The severing of the two cables was the second time in 13 months that a Chinese ship has damaged infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

D The new polar bearA Chinese container ship dragged its anchor a considerable distance to the bottom of the Baltic Sea during a storm in October 2023, damaging a gas pipeline. Officials reacted slowly to that incident, allowing the vessel to leave the area without stopping it, something they were keen to prevent in the case of the Yi Peng 3.

Nordic and Baltic officials are skeptical that the same thing could happen twice in quick succession. “The Chinese must be really terrible captains if this is going to happen innocently,” said one Baltic minister.