Intercepted by the Danish Navy, the vessel's suspicious route aligns with the damaged cables, fueling speculation of sabotage.
Excerpts from the article:
"the Visegrád 24 media outlet reported that the Danish Navy vessel Y311 Søløven intercepted the Yi Peng 3, which has since been stopped for inspection."
"The ship’s captain is reportedly a Russian citizen."
"Data from the website MarineTraffic indicates that the vessel’s route and timing align with the locations of the cable damage, which occurred on November 17 and 18. The affected cables connect Sweden to Lithuania and Finland to Germany and play a critical role in regional internet traffic."
Previous reports indicated that a Danish naval vessel was trailing the "Yi Peng 3" and subsequent reports said that Danish vessels had surrounded the cargo ship. Apparently they were waiting for paperwork to be finished.
The cargo ship behaved erratically and switched off its AIS transponder while passing through a region where two data cables were recently damaged under the Baltic Sea.
The incident is not entirely isolated - last autumn, another Chinese-owned cargo ship, the NewNew Polar Bear was photographed entering a Russian harbour without one anchor shortly after the BalticConnector gas pipeline had been severed between Estonia and Finland and the "EE-S1" data cable damaged between Estonia and Sweden. The ship's anchor was later recovered from the site of gas pipeline damage.
They'll be exchanged for some naive NGO worker, falsely imprisoned, and get off scot free, both the persons doing the mission, and the planners (example (1)).
My guess: if responsibility is proven, the owner of the ship will pay for fixing the cables (note: according to some sources, the ship has recently been transfered to a new owner). If they can credibly explain how it was an accident, they have a small chance of their insurer helping them pay.
Employees like the captain may indeed get convicted and jailed, and subsequently may get exchanged.
Typically, if a spy agency sends a ranked employee and he's busted, they will try to exchange him. However, if a spy agency hires a rando and he's busted, they typically leave him high and dry.