What happened

The BCS East-West Interlink between Lithuania and Sweden was severed on 17 November, followed by the C-Lion1 cable between Finland and Germany on 18 November. Investigators established that the Chinese-flagged bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 had dragged its port anchor for about a day and a half across roughly 180 nautical miles of the Baltic seabed and crossed both cable routes. Swedish investigators were allowed only limited access during a China-led ship inspection and could not determine whether the anchor was lowered deliberately; no crew member was prosecuted and no state direction was established. Both links were restored by 28 November, and network redundancy limited customer impact. This is one paired incident record because the same voyage and continuous anchor drag crossed both cables; the separate route layer retains each cable individually.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.