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German maritime police have stopped and boarded a tanker in the Kiel Canal linking the North and the Baltic seas, on suspicion it damaged an undersea cable off the Swedish island of Gotland, Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday.
The incident reportedly took place last week, coinciding with the disruption of the C-Lion 1 communications cable between Finland and Germany. The Antigua-flagged freighter Arne was reportedly en route from St. Petersburg, Russia to Seville, Spain.
On February 19, the Swedish authorities announced a suspected “disturbance” to the C-Lion1 subsea cable. The damage, however, “did not affect the functionality of telecommunications connections running in the cable,” Cinnia, the operator, said in a statement.
The Maritime Executive news outlet reported that Arne’s speed fluctuations and course drew the attention of NATO’s monitoring mission in the Baltic Sea. The German Federal Marine Police dispatched patrol vessels to monitor and escort the freighter to Kiel Bay.
German police inspected the tanker, noting that it was missing an anchor, which raised concerns about its potential involvement in the cable incident, the report said. But after a three-hour questioning of the crew, the vessel was allowed to continue its journey.
The ship, which several reports claimed has ties with Russia, is a 27-year-old freighter flagged in Antigua and owned in Latvia, according to the Maritime Executive and VesselFinder.
The freighter investigation follows a string of incidents involving damage to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. Western officials have speculated about Russian involvement but have refrained from leveling direct accusations.
Moscow has dismissed the allegations as “absurd.”
Meanwhile, NATO has increased its Baltic Sea presence and stepped up patrols in the region on the pretext of protecting undersea infrastructure from the alleged Russian threat.
Moscow has said the Baltic Sea – a strategic area for Russia’s naval operations and energy exports – has become an “internal lake of NATO” after Finland and Sweden joined the US-led military bloc.
The expansion left Russia controlling only a small portion of the coastline.
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