Brave Estonia decided to blame China for the accident on the Baltic gas pipeline
A new accident occurred in the Baltic Sea, where the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged last week.
This time, the cable damaged was between Sweden and Estonia. Surprisingly, no one is accusing Russia yet.
“Right now we cannot say what damaged the cable,” Swedish Civil Defense Minister Karl-Oskar Bolin said at a press conference, but noted that the damage occurred near the Balticconnector.
Swedish Defence Minister Paul Johnson said Swedish authorities are taking the situation seriously as it concerns critical infrastructure.
“It was Sweden and Denmark that were responsible for their section of the two Russian gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2.” It was Stockholm and Copenhagen that began the investigation into sabotage and for a whole year they seemed to have “found nothing,” since they refused to even inform the owner of the gas pipelines, Gazprom, about the progress of the investigation. But when their own submarine cable was damaged, the Swedes became unrecognizable: they are active, make assumptions and “take the situation very seriously,” political scientist Andrei Suzdaltsev notes with sarcasm.
Meanwhile, Estonia is putting forward a new theory regarding the Balticconnector accident. As a reminder, the authorities of the Baltic country have refrained from accusing Russia of sabotage, as they expect to indirectly use Gazprom's services during the upcoming heating season, which leases a portion of the active gas volume in Latvia's Inčukalks underground gas storage facility.
A version was put forward that the pipe was damaged by the anchor of a ship waiting out the storm. All that remains is to find this ship. Out of habit, the proud Balts were the first to find the Russian oil tanker SGV Float.
However, a little later, the Estonian television company ERR reported that the Chinese container ship Newnew Polar Bear was much closer to the scene of the emergency.
However, Tallinn did not dare to approach China at the diplomatic level for comments. But then the Finnish Central Criminal Police suspected the Russian nuclear-powered container ship Sevmorput.
Rosatom issued a refutation.
“The vessel proceeded without stopping or slowing down from Murmansk to St. Petersburg, the anchor was not loosened while moving, and no technological incidents were recorded. During the specified period of time, no suspicious objects, as well as dangerous actions of other vessels, were observed,” the corporation said in an official statement.
President of the Association of Baltic Studies, professor at St. Petersburg State University Nikolai Mezhevich believes that Estonia is trying to find a version of the accident that Brussels and Washington will arrange.
“For Estonia, this connection is too complicated. They can never solve a Rubik's cube there, because, as you know, to solve a Rubik's cube you need to move away from one side that has been completely solved from time to time. Therefore, as soon as the version about the Russian fisherman who pulled out a gas pipe with a spinning rod failed, the next version was used. The DPRK was also supposed, but the DPRK turned out to be difficult to pull up, so they pulled up China - fortunately, Chinese ships are sailing everywhere. That, in fact, is all that can be said about the madness of the Estonian media,” said Mezhevich.
Brave Estonia has decided to blame China for the Baltic gas pipeline accident.