Us, sabotaging undersea cables? Ridiculous, says Russia
A top German official said the incident looked deliberate, as Europe sees Moscow's hand at play.
Moscow has dismissed suggestions that Russia had anything to do with damaged telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea as “ridiculous.”
“It is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any grounds,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing on Wednesday. He blamed Ukraine for the incident — and cast more shade at Kyiv over the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions, in which Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian suspect.
“This [looks] ridiculous against the backdrop of the lack of any reaction to Ukraine’s subversive activities in the Baltic Sea. It is Ukraine that prefers to engage in acts of sabotage and terrorism on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, I mean the explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines,” he said.
Finnish network company Cinia said Monday it is investigating a broken undersea internet cable connecting Finland to Germany — just a day after another telecoms cable running between Lithuania and Sweden was damaged.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called the incident “sabotage,” while his Finnish counterpart Antti Häkkänen said that Russia has “willingness and capacity to do sabotage in Europe.” Häkkänen also urged NATO and the EU to do more to protect themselves from hybrid threats and defend undersea infrastructure.
Swedish outlet SVT on Tuesday reported that there were satellite images showing Chinese ship Yi Peng 3 — which had last docked at a Russian port, according to marine data — in the vicinity when the cables were damaged. The Danish Navy confirmed Wednesday that it is currently present in the area around the ship.
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