A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Undersea cables carrying internet traffic across the Baltic Sea in northern Europe were severed earlier this week, and European investigators are still trying to piece together what happened.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Germany's defense minister calls this an act of sabotage. The Danish navy stopped a Chinese cargo ship in the region, investigating a possible connection.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Berlin correspondent, Rob Schmitz, joins us now. So Rob, Steve mentioned that Chinese cargo ship. What makes investigators think it had something to do with this?
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Yeah, this Chinese vessel named the Yi Peng 3 left a Russian port on the Baltic Sea six days ago. And according to investigators, it passed over an undersea fiber-optic cable connecting Sweden and Lithuania Sunday morning. And shortly after that, the cable operator noticed that it had stopped working and later found out that the cable had been severed.
Then on Monday morning, investigators say the same ship passed over a telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Germany. And two minutes after that, that cable stopped working, and its operator discovered it had been cut as well. And that's why Swedish officials are investigating the Yi Peng 3. But they say they're also looking into other ships, saying there could be more parties involved.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So the cables were severed. Did it lead to any communications outages in Europe?
SCHMITZ: There was a temporary reduction in internet service in Lithuania after this happened, but the local operator rerouted traffic, and it all improved. But according to Moritz Brake, a marine security expert, what's most important here is that this type of action, which he believes was intentional, should be considered an attack. Here he is speaking to German public media.
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MORITZ BRAKE: (Speaking German).
SCHMITZ: So A, he's saying here, "over 90% of the world's data traffic runs oversea cables like these," he said, "and this means someone is trying to destroy the connectivity of our societies. Someone wants to show us we can disconnect you all, and we need to show in return that we are not going to let ourselves be bullied."
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So what are the Chinese saying about this?
SCHMITZ: Well, the company that owns the Yi Peng 3, Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, is not responding to requests for comment. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said the Chinese government requires Chinese ships to adhere to relevant laws. But it is worth mentioning here that a year ago, another Chinese ship destroyed undersea cables and an undersea gas line connecting Finland and Estonia in the same region of the Baltic Sea. A Finnish investigation found that the ship had been dragging its anchor for hundreds of miles, scraping the bottom of the sea. China's government admitted that the vessel was responsible for all that damage, but claimed it was all an accident.
MARTÍNEZ: Any suspicion that the Chinese ship was somehow in cahoots with Russia?
SCHMITZ: Well, there might be suspicion about that, and social media is sort of abuzz with all sorts of speculation. But at this moment, authorities have not released any evidence about any such connection. And it is important to reiterate here that this is still very much an open investigation.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So where does that investigation go now?
SCHMITZ: So Swedish investigators are now being joined by investigators from the other countries involved. And a real-time GPS map of shipping traffic shows that the Chinese cargo ship has not moved in the day that it's been there, and there's a Danish navy patrol boat floating beside it. This investigation could likely take a week or longer to conclude due to the bad weather in the region.
MARTÍNEZ: And to add a layer here, I mean, this comes at a time where there's some pretty heightened tensions in Europe.
SCHMITZ: Yeah. The U.S. evacuated its embassy in Kyiv yesterday, bracing for Russian attacks. Ukraine has used both American and British long-range missiles to attack Russia after President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to attack targets inside of Russia for the first time. So it's clear that tensions in Europe are heating up.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Rob Schmitz. Rob, thanks.
SCHMITZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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