German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has issued a warning about a “decadent Russian shadow fleet” of ships following recent damage to undersea cables in Europe.
“Almost every month, ships are damaging vital undersea cables in the Baltic Sea,” Baerbock told the German Funke newspaper group on Saturday.
“Ship crews drop anchors overboard, drag them for several kilometers across the ocean for no apparent reason and then lose them when they pull them up.”
Baerbock said it was unlikely that several incidents in recent months were a coincidence.
“This is an urgent wake-up call for all of us. In a digital world, undersea cables are the communication arteries that hold our world together,” he said.
He called for tougher sanctions against Russia and greater investment in national security.
EU targets Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’
On Wednesday, the Estlink 2 undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia was damaged.
Finnish authorities believe the incident may have been an act of sabotage and have detained the Cook Islands-flagged oil tanker Eagle S, a ship that the EU believes was carrying so-called Russian May be related to the “Shadow Fleet”.
“Shadow fleet” refers to ships that are used by Russia to evade sanctions, for example to sell oil.
“Russia uses it to finance its illegal war of aggression in Ukraine,” Baerbock said.
More than 50 such ships were subject to EU sanctions as of mid-December, he said.
In a separate incident in November, two fiber-optic cables were severed in the Baltic Sea. Swedish authorities boarded a Chinese ship as part of an investigation into possible sabotage.
zc/wd (dpa, AFP)
