The Swedish Coast Guard has abandoned the Chinese vessel "Yi Peng 3", which has been lying idle in the Kattegat for three weeks. This was confirmed by coast guard spokesman Mattias Lindholm to the Swedish media outlet Aftonbladet.
Instead, the coast guard will monitor the ship in cooperation with Danish and German authorities and through technical surveillance.
- We assess that, as the situation has been for a long time, we will need to use our ship and our crew for other tasks and regular assignments, says the spokesman.
A few days before "Yi Peng 3" dropped anchor in the Kattegat, the vessel had passed two data cables in the Baltic Sea on its way from a Russian port, which were soon found to be broken.
In addition, the ship turned off its radio signal for almost eight hours while it was sailing through the area. This is shown by data from Marine Traffic, where you can see the locations of ships.
For the past three weeks, the Danish defense has been circling the Chinese vessel, where the Swedish coast guard and the German coast guard have also joined in. On Tuesday afternoon, it can be seen that a ship from the Danish defense and the German coast guard is still near the ship.
Possible sabotage
Swedish police are investigating the breaches as possible sabotage. The damage occurred on November 17th on cables that run between Sweden and Lithuania and between Finland and Germany, respectively. Both places where the damage occurred are located in the Swedish economic zone in the Baltic Sea.
The Swedish police's national operations department is responsible for the further investigation. The ship is however located in the Danish economic zone, but outside Danish territorial waters, which means that it is the flag state - in this case China - that has the police authority.
Mao Ning, spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced at the end of November that China is willing to cooperate with the relevant countries to find out what happened. How far China is ready to go in this cooperation, however, remains unclear.
The Defence Command stated on Tuesday morning that it currently has nothing new to announce about the Danish Defence's presence at the vessel.
/ritzau/
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