This was later followed by news a telecoms cable operated by Sweden's Arelion had too been damaged at a location off the coast of Hiiumaa.

The belief was that the damage was caused by a trailing anchor from Chinese ship the Newnew Polar Bear, while this summer, China did concede that this had been the accidental cause of the damage to the gas pipeline.

ETV current affairs show "Impulss," in cooperation with foreign journalists, has however established some new facts and details about the case.

At a little before 5.20 p.m. on Saturday, October 7, 2023, Chinese cargo ship the Newnew Polar Bear, sailing under the flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, announced that it was entering Estonia's maritime area of ​​responsibility.

This routine exchange of information between the vessel, en route to St. Petersburg from Kaliningrad, and the Transport Board control center of the in Tallinn as it neared Hiiumaa, at one end of the Arelion cable.

Though the seas were stormy, with waves of sometimes five meters height – all while the Newnew Polar Bear was carrying 287 tonnes of hazardous cargo – the dispatcher did not notice anything unusual at first glance.

An hour after arriving in Estonia's maritime zone, the Newnew Polar Bear traversed the sea surface above the Swedish-Estonian communication cable and – as it later transpired – damaged it with its anchor, which had sunk to the seabed.

In cooperation with Swedish journalists from public broadcaster SVT, "Impulss" showed a never-before broadcast photo of the cable, at point 52 kilometers off Hiiumaa, which appears to show the cable damaged or deformed, but not severed.

Commander of the Estonian Navy Cdre Jüri Saska said: "There, as with any other ship at sea, they endeavored to maintain their speed, course and port arrival times. It is thanks to that that they sailed at the speed they did."

"If now that anchor or chain was freed, be it intentionally or unintentionally, I can only say what I would have done. I would have tried to slow down and seen how to resolve this situation. To say that you don't sense this... I think you can sense it when you have tens or hundreds of meters of chain with several thousand kilos on the end," he continued.

The Newnew Polar Bear's anchor is located in the bow of the ship, slightly recessed in the vessel's hull. The system is made in such a way that when the anchor is released, the entire chain, several hundred meters long, unwinds, along with the six-tonne ​​anchor.

The anchor is not visible from the captain's bridge, which is located towards the stern of the vessel as with many large cargo ships; to do so would involve a nearly 200-meter trek to the other end of the ship.

German shipyard Meyer Werft built the model specifically with the Baltic Sea in mind, while this particular vessel has plowed the sea-lanes here hundreds, if not thousands of times, during the course of its life under its previous owners.

After going under Chinese ownership, it traveled from East Asia to St. Petersburg, for the first time. So could the accident have been just that, as was claimed in the article published in the Chinese media in summer?

"How can I put this politely? You would need to find a very stupid captain," Cdre Säska chuckled when responding.

Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur (Reform) added that the resulting furrow on the seabed is certainly of a length that makes it hard to believe that it was all just an accident.

This "furrow," all told, ended up being 180 kilometers long, meaning that the anchor trailing behind did so for essentially the same distance as traveling from Tallinn to Tartu, albeit at sea.

A 21-member crew continued the journey after the Arelion communication cable was damaged.

Next, in the small hours of October 8, or seven hours after the first cable was damaged, the Newnew Polar Bear's anchor struck the Balticconnector pipeline at a speed of 11 knots; suddenly the ship's speed dropped to six knots – most likely this was the moment when the anchor ruptured the pipeline, "Impulss" reported.

"The speed dropped, so it had to have made a pretty good noise through the entire hull; if you still essentially hook such a pipe with such an anchor. The speed does drop for a moment, but rather sharply," Saska went on.

Minister Pevkur added: "In this case, the ship's crew should have at least contacted the Finnish border guard, or some other authorities in Finland, and said that we have doubts that we got stuck somewhere."

"It is hard to believe that in the case of such a large vessel the captain could expect that you will get stuck behind a rock. In fact that's not possible. So that would have been normal activity. That didn't happen, they sailed on."

According to Saska, the ship's crew should have realized that they had hit something after they got snagged on the pipe.

Around three o'clock, the Chinese ship damaged a third infrastructure object – the Finnish-Estonian communication cable operated by Elisa – with the anchor's chain and the remaining section of the anchor itself.

Then by the evening of October 8, the ship reached St. Petersburg, where a hanging anchor chain could be observed. When the Newnew Polar Bear returned to Kaliningrad two days later via the Gulf of Finland, authorities in both Estonia and Finland tried to contact the crew.

The Newnew Polar Bear also lost a section of its anchor at the Balticconnector site; an image of this was later made public by Finnish researchers.

Saska recalled the conversation: "The general response was that we are fine – we don't need any assistance at sea and we have no reason to make port."

The navy commander added that while initially there seemed to be a language barrier, once the Estonian side was able to find Chinese-speaking interpreters, the ship's crew actually switched to English. So there was no real language issue, in short.

While the Newnew Polar Bear was passing the western Estonian archipelago on its return trip, a Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) helicopter was sent to monitor it.

So why was a ship that destroyed the infrastructure, albeit in international waters but near Estonia and Finland, not detained on suspicion of terrorism, as some critics have subsequently pointed out?

Saska said: "This is is a very complicated process. To put it simply, the flag state is the one which actually has to give consent, because otherwise, to state it more clearly, that would be piracy," adding that if this practice were not in place, " essentially you could detain every ship and say 'we want to look and want to inspect what you are doing here.' For this reason there is such a concept as freedom of navigation."

According to Minister Pevkur, checking a ship that starts its journey from a Chinese port somewhere and ends in St. Petersburg is essentially excluded if it remains solely in international waters.

"On the other hand, of course, we also have to take into account that if we want to change international maritime law for instance that would also mean that, for example, Chinese authorities would get the opportunity to go and inspect Western vessels."

"Let's face it that whereas we would do it this as expected in a civilized way, where we will not go after everything if there is no reason to do so, authoritarian countries would instead take this opportunity for absolute control," the minister went on, frankly.

By the time the Newnew Polar Bear moved out of Estonia's area of responsibility, on October 11, a criminal case had already been initiated on both sides of the Gulf of Finland.

Finland is investigating the case as an act of sabotage, as damage to Estonian infrastructure. In the aftermath of the incident, the two countries jointly submitted to China a request for legal assistance, but 11 months and two weeks later had not received an official response.

"We have so far received some contacts, the summary of the primary safety investigation. From the point of view of criminal procedure, there is really nothing else to do with the summary of this safety investigation, save that it makes for popular science material. It is not viable to use it as pure evidence," Defense Minister Pevkur said.

It is now a matter for the investigation to ascertain as far as possible the true circumstances of this story via a request for official legal assistance, among other things.

But whether we will actually find these out, Minister Pevkur remains skeptical on, given the other party is the PRC.

The story aired by "Impulss" on Tuesdsay was prepared as a collaboration by six EU broadcasters. In addition to ERR and SVT from Estonia and Sweden, and Yle from Finland, these were: VRT (Belgium), NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Pointer (Netherlands) and NRK (Norway).

Contributions were made by DR (Denmark), BBC (U.K.) and by the Marineschepen.nl, Vake.ai and Marinetraffic.com sites, plus the Dossier Center, managed by Russian dissident Mikhail Khordokovsky.

Program-makers also repeatedly reached out to Chinese diplomatic missions, but were told these were not in a position to share details about the investigation.

At the same time, it was stated that China always complies with international law and related obligations, while smooth communication and good cooperation with parties involved, including Estonia, always takes place.

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