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Floating megabomb heaves to near the English coast

204 points by itronitron 2y ago

Aeolun 2y ago
Just leave it offshore then? I’m fairly certain ‘outside of territorial waters’ is equivalent to ‘more than 25km from shore’. It can safely explode there. If the crew want to get taken off their sinking ship they are more than welcome.
- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  Exactly my point of view, detonate it far away and let the insurance pay
  - agent327 2y ago
    Is this your general view on all ships carrying fertiliser? Do you know how many people would starve to death if we stopped shipping fertiliser around the world?
    - lnxg33k1 2y ago
      I'm no starving expert, but is all fertiliser explosive?
      - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
        A lot of the useful ones are nitrate based. So, “sometimes”.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      Only ships owned by countries we are more or less at war with and have a rich history of sabotage and assassinations. I think this is fairly self-evident. It’s quite similar to a trojan horse.
    - Hamuko 2y ago
      Are all ships carrying fertiliser damaged?
aftergibson 2y ago
The great sort of news you want to hear while drinking your morning coffee and living in Kent to the east of London.
- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  Be careful, if the coffee is too hot.. :D
- samllmas 2y ago
  Grab some popcorn instead
- fanf2 2y ago
  How far are you from the SS Richard Montgomery? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
Traubenfuchs 2y ago
Ships and their crews can‘t be cheap. Who paid to put the ammonium nirate on the ruby? Who paid for the ship to go somewhere? What was the original deal involving the ammonium nitrate? Did someone in another country originally plan to buy it but the deal was later cancelled? The ammonium nitrate cargo alone is worth several million us dollar.
- illwrks 2y ago
  Perhaps it was someone trying to get around sanctions on Russian imports, was found out and refused entry/ abandoned?
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    There are no sanctions on Russian fertilizers. Europe's fertilizer production is down due to high natural gas prices (I wonder what happened) and import from Russia is up.
    - wewxjfq 2y ago
      Do you want to provide sources for these claims? I see Germany's fertilizer exports are down by 10%, while its fertilizer imports from Russia fell by 80%. Fertilizer production seems to be up, but this metric is tracked by value only.
      - protomolecule 2y ago
        "For some types of fertiliser, such as urea, imports have even increased since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The cheap fertiliser has helped European farmers, but the region’s own fertiliser producers have been struggling to compete. “We are right now being flooded by fertilisers from Russia, which are significantly cheaper than our fertilisers, for the simple reason that they pay peanuts for natural gas in comparison to us European producers,” said Petr Cingr, chief executive of SKW Stickstoffwerke Piesteritz, Germany’s largest producer of ammonia. “If politicians will not act,” he warned, Europe’s production capacity “will disappear”. ... A third of EU imports of urea, the cheapest form of nitrogen-based fertiliser, come from Russia, with the amount imported in 2023 close to record levels, Eurostat data shows. Poland’s imports of Russian urea climbed to almost $120mn in 2023, up from just over $84mn in 2021, for example, according to customs data. ... Other big players are leaving the market. BASF, the world’s largest chemicals group, has shrunk its operations in Europe over the past few years, including its fertiliser business, and instead focused new investments in the US and China, where costs are lower." [0] [0] https://archive.is/20240630042149/https://www.ft.com/content/8d4e6543-f210-4a26-9bed-93fd0c35b6e6 https://archive.is/20240630042149/https://www.ft.com/content...
willguest 2y ago
I love the word 'megabomb' as much as the next guy, and I'm about all threat escalation, but isn't ammonium nitrate also fertiliser? Since this is one of the main (and historic) exports from Russia, I would imagine that one or two cargo ships have carried the stuff before. A little more info on how it is stored/transported and under which eventualities the cargo would become bomb-like would give me a sense of journalistic satisfaction as an accompaniment to my sense of impending doom.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago
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- dtquad 2y ago
  No, Russia is deliberately using this ship to harass NATO countries. The ship was recently unusually close to a NATO base in Norway before the Norwegian coast guard chased them away. Here in Denmark the Danish coast guard also had to confront the ship. The ship has enough Ammonium Nitrate to cause an explosion several times the size of the 2020 Beirut port explosion. Basically any other country with a faulty ship full of dangerous explosive material would tow the ship back and fix their own mess. Russia is instead using it as hybrid warfare against geopolitical adversaries.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - practice9 2y ago
      The interesting thing is that ship was damaged almost immediately after leaving the port, had a chance to stop in Russian ports along the way but instead is doing a tour near EU countries. The crew is either amazingly incompetent or malicious/complicit. You don’t put a ship that can blow up near: a. Gas&oil terminals, b. military air base
rich_sasha 2y ago
I don't entirely follow the logic of the trip (but I know nothing about shipping). Tromso on the Norwegian Sea, then Klaipeda on the Baltic, now off the shore of Kent? That's very roundabout. It's easy to come up with explanations involving bad will. There must be some legit ones too. What are they trying to achieve? Did they buy some ammonium nitrate and are trying to offload it for a buyer, but successive ports are saying no? Surely whoever paid and loaded the cargo needed some idea of where and how they will offload it.
- timthorn 2y ago
  The vessel is looking for a port to berth in but keeps being turned away.
- krona 2y ago
  > That's very roundabout. Perhaps due to poor weather conditions in the past 14 days, especially given it has a cracked hull.
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    Again, I'm ignorant about seafaring, but isn't bad weather a reason to avoid long trips?
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
      Bad weather is a reason to avoid bad weather. On the scale of a long voyage, weather is "local" and can be avoided either by picking a different route, or a different time (potentially hiding in a man-made or natural harbor where the ship is less exposed to the waves and weather due to the surrounding terrain).
- Arnt 2y ago
  That ship is only 183m long. If it was in an emergency, there were plenty of ports near Tromsø that can handle that. Even Murmansk isn't far away. Marine Traffic says it's under way to Malta.
lnxg33k1 2y ago
I'd say, bring it as far as you can from any human being, and detonate the shit out of it, it has like 7 times more shit on it than the one in Beirut? And you want to dock it somewhere? Since what happened in Beirut, how do we allow to have so much explosive on a single ship?
- lazide 2y ago
  It’s having the problems it’s having because no one allows a ship in with that much explosives on it anymore haha!
  - lnxg33k1 2y ago
    I mean, it's a great solution right now to detonate it away from humans, but I was more wondering to disallow loading that much explosive in the first place, because I think long term it's not great for sealife to detonate 20k tons of explosive every now and then :D
    - protomolecule 2y ago
      Then get ready for the raise of the prices on agricultural products in Europe. What's explosive for you is fertilizer for the farmers.
Terr_ 2y ago
> Spurning the obvious solution of a return to Russia, where she loaded at Kandalaksha in late August, the damaged vessel embarked on an odyssey of attempted entry to European ports, beginning at the Norwegian anchorage of Tromsø This needs more explanation, does this mean the captain refused? Or Russian port authorities refused? Or they just... chose to limp in a particular direction? From another article [0]: > Not long after leaving the Russian port of Kandalaksha in late August, the general cargo vessel ran aground in a storm in Norwegian waters and a Port State inspection in Norway confirmed cracks in the hull and damage to the ship’s propeller and rudder. [0] https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in-the-channel-due-to-dangerous-cargo/ https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in...
- Arnt 2y ago
  It was allowed entry to Tromsø and stayed there for a few days without repairs.
- alibarber 2y ago
  Would you want to be a captain of an EU registered ship stuck in Russia for an indeterminate amount of time with limited ability to pay for (sanctions) repairs of an uncertain nature? Of course I have no real info on why but it does seem plausible that returning would be unattractive.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > Would you want to be a captain of an EU registered ship stuck in Russia for an indeterminate amount of time with limited ability to pay for (sanctions) repairs of an uncertain nature? Your hypothesis is quickly rejected/proven to be bullshit by the fact that the travel distance that the ship took after being rejected by Norway was greater than the distance it would need to take to get to a Russian port. And instead the ship planted itself where? Right in the middle of the English channel? We're talking about hitting ports from Norway, Lithuania, and now UK/France/Belgium?
    - wood_spirit 2y ago
oswalk 2y ago
Is it unfeasible to ship these kinds of things in smaller loads? Why would you put any kind of dangerous material that would "obliterate the center of any port city" in the same place without strong guarantees that nothing will go wrong? A boat does not seem like that kind of place.
- lazide 2y ago
  Hey, if you’re already packing ‘world destroying’ amounts of explosives and taking all the precautions, then why not make it 3x the amount?
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  This fertilizer is very difficult to detonate accidentally. Quite a few things need to go wrong. It's also used in huge quantities.
  - op00to 2y ago
    It is very easy to detonate on purpose though. Perhaps by contaminating it with fuel oil from the ship itself. “By accident”.
londons_explore 2y ago
ammonium nitrate is safe till you accidentally mix it with something like fuel oil. It would be trivial for an inspector to go look and see if such mixing has occurred... and if it has not, let it into port to sell the cargo.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Ammonium nitrate is explosive by itself. It doesn’t need fuel or oxidizer. By adjusting its pH level the breakdown reaction can be prevented and the compound stabilized, but it decays over time or when improperly stored.
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    In my humble understanding among I’m nitrate is a oxidizer (or a precursor of it). Am I wrong ? How would it explode without a fuel ?
    - adastra22 2y ago
      2NH₄NO₃ (s) → 2N₂ (g) + O₂ (g) + 4H₂O (g) Only happens spontaneously at high temperature/pressure. But of course being an explosive reaction, once it starts in a little pocket of material, all the neighboring material experiences a lot of heat and pressure, and blows up. And then the next layer, and the next layer, etc. If improperly stored, pockets form with different pH values that cause it to spontaneously occur at lower temperatures. Or a spark, or a compressive event in an unstable patch, etc.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
        Or, if the ship is indeed being used as a weapon, a "small" hidden charge of military explosives that will be hard to find after a kiloton-scale explosion.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion suggests that pure AN is also explosive. As far as I know, the explosion that leveled part of Beirut was mostly assumed to be caused by uncontaminated AN too.
GaggiX 2y ago
I hope they evacuate the crew and bomb it in the middle of the ocean so we can film the explosion in 4K. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen.
- abricot 2y ago
  Sadly true. It will likely be 720p vertical.
  - JBiserkov 2y ago
    And shaking horizontally, with a bit of rotational wobble.
londons_explore 2y ago
Notably, ammonium nitrate is fertilizer. It is also effectively 'natural gas in solid form' - the main input to making ammonium nitrate is natural gas.The main cost is the cost of the natural gas, and there are huge worldwide markets for both natural gas and fertilizer. Therefore, from an economics perspective, natural gas and fertilizer are pretty much tied together. Same as electricity and aluminium. Natural gas is hard to ship - whereas fertilizer is easy to ship. Since Russia has bountiful supplies of natural gas, and sanctions prevent it selling that gas to europe via pipeline, producing fertilizer and selling that to the rest of the world is a workaround.
- cromka 2y ago
  You make it sound as if you can produce natural gas out of a fertilizer.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    Yeah you just put it on grass then wait for cows to munch on the grass and burp.
  - MrVandemar 2y ago
    The parent does not imply anywhere that you can produce natural gas out of fertiliser. * They state that natural gas is an input to the fertiliser product * They state that with sanctions on natural gas from Russia, converting it to fertiliser evades the sanctions, albeit by transforming it into a different but saleable product.
    - croes 2y ago
      I think they mean because of that part >It is also effectively 'natural gas in solid form'
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    Would it be necessary if they could burn it in a controlled way that extracts an acceptable amount of energy? (Pure speculation of course, as I know nothing about the matter)
rdtsc 2y ago
> Ammonium nitrate is highly explosive, especially when exposed to fire Is that true? It seems, from a pedestrian perspective, if just fire could trigger it, they wouldn’t be transporting it in such amounts.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Just shaking it too much can trigger it, if stored improperly.
  - rdtsc 2y ago
    If it gets wet or packed too tightly. Ah interesting. Yeah trusting Russian inspectors that they did their job is not a good idea.
- albumen 2y ago
  From the Wikipedia article [1]: "In the second case, the explosion results from a fire that spreads into the ammonium nitrate (AN) itself (Texas City, Brest, Tianjin, Beirut) or to a mixture of an ammonium nitrate with a combustible material during the fire. The fire must be confined at least to a degree for successful transition from a fire to an explosion (a phenomenon known as "deflagration to detonation transition", or DDT). Pure, compact AN is stable and very difficult to initiate. Ammonium nitrate decomposes in temperatures above 169 °C (336 °F). Pure AN is stable and will stop decomposing once the heat source is removed, but when catalysts are present, the reaction can become self-sustaining (known as self-sustaining decomposition, or SSD). This is a well-known hazard with some types of NPK fertilizers and is responsible for the loss of several cargo ships." [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_incidents_and_disasters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_inc...
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
  > if it was so unsafe, they wouldn’t be transporting it in such amounts. You'd think so, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion A classic example of how reasoning from logic alone is no match actual knowledge of reality. Or perhaps, in this specific case, the unsafeness is the point: it's intended to harass.
roenxi 2y ago
The hybrid war angle is wild conspiracy theorising. If the Russians wanted to blow up an English city they might as well drop bombs on it directly. I still wouldn't want to be near a fertiliser ship though so it'd be reasonable to tell it to go somewhere else.
- wslh 2y ago
  The world is full of complexities and often misunderstood events. Applying higher-order thinking, such as realpolitik and game theory, can provide a more nuanced understanding of global dynamics. After centuries of dismissing concerns as mere "conspiracy theories" it's important to recognize that this may not be a theory, but rather a potential warning.
- tgv 2y ago
  How are they going to drop a bomb on it? Bomber? Rocket? If a ship explodes, Putin will deny everything, and grudgingly everyone will accept it, because you can't be certain, and we don't want war. But if a long-range bomber leaves Russia, flies to Liverpool and drops a bomb, it's an open declaration of war.
- cromka 2y ago
  Blowing up a ship offers way more plausibility. It’s not hard to imagine it would leave NATO without response. Not so much with the actual bombs.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  Dropping normal bombs on it is highly identifiable and attributable, and not very damaging. Also, a normal bomber or cruise missile might actually get shot down. There would be no doubt about Article 5 and the need for a military response. Dropping a nuke on it is equally or more damaging, but likewise highly identifiable and attributable, and would force an even bigger reaction, likely even by China. Also, again, might be shot down. An explosion of a cargo ship is just as damaging as a small nuke, but cannot be immediately identified as an attack - even if people suspect it, it's hard to conclusively prove that it wasn't an accident. This makes it hard to muster a unified and strong response.
chipdart 2y ago
> While Lithuanian authorities announced there was no evidence of malicious intent against the country’s national security, they noted that when dealing with Russia, or other unfriendly international actors, states should always be cautious. This bears repeating. Russia has bee actively engaged in low-intensity warfare with the west for decades, and has single-handledly escalated their aggression towards the west in general but western Europe in particular for the last couple of years to the point they overtly and very publicly threaten the world with all sorts of attacks and global annihilation. Once Russia tries to casually float a massive bomb right into your doorstep, only a massive moron would not mitigate the risk presented by Russia, even if considered implausible.
- dtquad 2y ago
  Russia found out they had a faulty dangerous explosive ship under their control and instead of safely towing the ship to Russia and unload the Russian cargo they are instead using it to harass NATO countries as part of their hybrid warfare. The ship has been featured extensively in Danish and Norwegian media. First the Russians attempted to get the explosive ship close to a NATO base in Norway before the Norwegian coast guard chased them away. The Danish coast guard also had to confront them. The ship contains several times more Ammonium Nitrate than what caused the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - samllmas 2y ago
    7x Beirut or 1/3 power of Hiroshima according to the article (although would it cause as much damage as a nuke detonated in the air?)
    - sixthDot 2y ago
      No, equal TNT power equivalent can have different effect depending on the nature of the explosive. The heat spreaded from an amonium nitrate blast, like in Beyrut, does not last as long, from [0], > However even on this basis, comparing the actual energy yields of a large nuclear device and an explosion of TNT can be slightly inaccurate. Small TNT explosions, especially in the open, don't tend to burn the carbon-particle and hydrocarbon products of the explosion. Gas-expansion and pressure-change effects tend to "freeze" the burn rapidly. A large open explosion of TNT may maintain fireball temperatures high enough so that some of those products do burn up with atmospheric oxygen [...] See also the "Relative effectiveness factor" paragraph [1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effect...
louthy 2y ago
Here’s its current location: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1605/mmsi:229041000/imo:9626390/vessel:RUBY https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:16...
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
qwery 2y ago
I don't know much about CEPA (this is the first time I've come across them) but I don't think they're the best source for news. This article is extremely inflammatory, frames the entire story around Russia and seems to be extremely selective with which details were included. The article is stuffed with problems but I'll point out just a couple of examples: > Maltese-registered cargo ship This appears to be a deliberate attempt to cast doubt as to the "true" operator or entity controlling the vessel. The ship is "Maltese-registered" because it's owned by a Maltese company, 'Ruby Enterprise'. It's destination is Malta. > Spurning the obvious solution of a return to Russia, Is this obvious? As the article admits, the vessel is seaworthy. Why would a seaworthy ship carrying some exported product return to the origin port? I think this BBC article[0] offers a much more balanced take on the events. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g95721leo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g95721leo
- jojobas 2y ago
  Yeah, cause Russians couldn't afford a front in Malta of all places, or play the crew blind.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
    A Russian front in a small corruptible EU state in the Mediterranean (e.g. Malta, Cyprus) would not be a surprise at all. See many news articles e.g. https://www.eureporter.co/world/malta/2023/08/09/malta-has-a-soft-spot-for-russian-money/ https://www.eureporter.co/world/malta/2023/08/09/malta-has-a... https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/cyprus-model-politics-tax-haven-russian-wealth/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/cypr...
    - jojobas 2y ago
      That is exactly my point.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
        Sure. I thought though that it might need spelling out to some of the audience here who are far removed from that part of the world. I myself didn't know it until I visited Malta and Cyprus.
bborud 2y ago
I'm assuming this is the ship? https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1605/mmsi:229041000/imo:9626390/vessel:RUBY#overview https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:16... Anyone have a Marine Traffic account and can tell us about its movements?
- sorokod 2y ago
  No account required: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9626390 https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9626390
  - bborud 2y ago
    That just tells me where it is now. You need an account to see where it has been for the last N days.
    - sorokod 2y ago
      Ah true, not exactly what you are looking for but according to this article [1] : Kandalaksha Tromsø Klaipeda Gothenburg [1] https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in-the-channel-due-to-dangerous-cargo/ https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in...
yawpitch 2y ago
For the non-boaters, “heaves to” means “has stopped” in this context.
aAKagh 2y ago
The only Western asset that has been sabotaged was Nordstream, by either the U.S. or the Ukrainians (now the official story is that Zalushny ordered it). CEPA is a propaganda site: https://cepa.org/article/wake-up-nato-its-sabotage/ https://cepa.org/article/wake-up-nato-its-sabotage/ "European energy security and the continent’s critical infrastructure are the core pillars of Transatlantic security. Safeguarding them is fundamental to ensuring democratic resilience and stability." In light of Nordstream, this is hypocritical and offensive to Western Europeans who suffer the economic consequences. Yes, the Russian invasion is bad, yes, they should get out of Ukraine, but repeatedly manufacturing additional stories is counterproductive.
- simion314 2y ago
  What about Eastern Europe, some ammo depo sabotaged by Ruzzians? Sabotaging GPS that affected air traffice ?
  - rhagsf 2y ago
    What about it? "ammo depo sabotaged" does not yield any meaningful search results. If it were confirmed, certainly The Telegraph and the New York Times would shout it from the rooftops. The GPS jamming is classified by the Finnish transport agency as a "side effect of Russia's anti-drone activities": https://www.politico.eu/article/gps-jamming-is-a-side-effect-of-russian-military-activity-finnish-transport-agency-says/ https://www.politico.eu/article/gps-jamming-is-a-side-effect... "Jamming GPS signals over the Baltic Sea is “most likely” a side effect of Russia's anti-drone activities, Traficom, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, said today. “The interference intensified when Ukraine's drone attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure began in January 2024,” Traficom said in a press release. Estonia also blames Russia for the signal jamming, but the Finnish agency doesn't agree with the Tallinn government in defining the interference as a hybrid attack."
    - simion314 2y ago
      [flagged]
qwertox 2y ago
Can't it be dragged to the Kaliningrad port? That would be the perfect place to store the ammonium nitrate.
malomalsky 2y ago
This is how I found out that Russia is burning down IKEA warehouses in Europe xD
- protomolecule 2y ago
  Nope, you've found that somebody alleges that without any proof. There is a difference.
lolc 2y ago
One thing that's only lightly touched upon in the article: Is this journey unusual and where is the fertilizer usually unloaded? The way the article is written, the ship's operators may with plausible deniability be deliberately targeting ports where a blast would be most debilitating for NATO. But where are other ships with this fertilizer unloading? It must be a common operation in European ports. Are there special ports for this, and the captain is spurning them? Ostensibly because they want to dock for repairs? Now that I think about it, while it could be hard to sell that much fertilizer from a port where it wasn't ordered to, transfering it to another vessel not in need of repairs would solve the whole situation overnight wouldn't it? That's expensive but should be normal procedure I'd expect. So yeah what are the operators up to?
senectus1 2y ago
Its an interesting scenario. because if the ship suddenly decided to turn around and head for the closest, most densely populated costal city... what can they do about it? Blow it up? its ALREADY close enough to cause significant damage. Somehow sink it without detonating it? The environmental damage alone would be devistating to the econcomy... if this is a russian plot, it's already increadibly successfull.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  Nukes aren't a perfect model for a ship full of explosive fertilizer, but a reasonable enough approximation/upper bound for which we can easily find formulas/calculators online. A 15 kiloton nuke has a 1 psi radius of about 3 km according to https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/# https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/# So a possible solution would indeed be stopping it by any means necessary somewhere between the 22 km mark (where it enters territorial waters) and the 3 km mark where it becomes a serious hazard.
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  You just use tugboats to push it away, and protect the tugboats with coast guard vessels. The only environmental damage would be from the ship fuel. The fertilizer is not a problem, maybe it would cause a short term algae boom.
- pvaldes 2y ago
  > head for the closest, most densely populated costal city. London actually.
FollowingTheDao 2y ago
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.
portaouflop 2y ago
TIL you could wreck the whole international economy/market/political order with a few well placed shipwrecks
- iamtedd 2y ago
  Not even a few. Just one. In the Suez.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
Russia sent a tugboat to Cuba. They can easily rescue the ship if they wanted.
bartread 2y ago
Sorry, but this stinks to high heaven, and what it stinks of is bullshit. If the cargo is Russian and you legitimately want to dock for repairs, then why try Tromsø, Klaipėda, and then anchor the ship off the UK coast? If you legitimately need to dock for repairs why not dock at Kaliningrad? The cargo is after all Russian so let them deal with the problem. You have to literally sail past Kaliningrad to get to the English channel in any case, so it's hardly surprising that people port authorities are cautious if not outright suspicious.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  Because it was damaged in northern Norway, and requested permission to go to Klaipeda, in the Baltic. Lithuania said no, unless it unloads first. The Lithuanians said, two weeks ago, they'd found a port in Norway that agreed to unload, near where it was stopped. Presumably that fell though and thus the permission was withdrawn. Then Denmark refused access to the Baltic, and Gothenburg also then said no. The ship never entered the Baltic as far as I can tell. The implication is that the ship didn't want to go back to Murmansk. Possibly it was also denied entry, or doesn't want to get stuck there over winter if the Russians can't or won't repair the ship. It's not a Russian ship, it might not even be Russian-owned cargo any more, depending on the INCOTERMS, why would they make the effort if no one else will? https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2358770/ship-with-russian-chemicals-will-not-be-allowed-into-klaipeda-port-pm https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2358770/ship-with-r...
kkfx 2y ago
Curiously no one say who have bought the fertilizer... Ask yourself why, to ask yourself why the war in the first place.
czottmann 2y ago
Combine that story with the recent, substantial reports about hapless pseudo-mercenary "disposable agents" bought by Russian intelligence, and the whole thing feels even more icky. Have that ship dock somewhere, and some idiot assets who don't know what they got themselves into infiltrate it to start a fire or something, for a few hundred bucks. See this article from German newspaper ZEIT (auto-translated using Google Translate): https://www-zeit-de.translate.goog/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agenten-geheimdienst-sicherheitsbehoerde/komplettansicht?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-zeit-de.translate.goog/2024/41/russische-sabotag... > The disposable agents > Russia is waging a war of sabotage against the West. Initially with graffiti, now with arson attacks. The perpetrators are young men who have no idea who they are serving. Original German-language article at https://www.zeit.de/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agenten-geheimdienst-sicherheitsbehoerde/komplettansicht https://www.zeit.de/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agent... Archived at https://archive.ph/20240926105720/https://www.zeit.de/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agenten-geheimdienst-sicherheitsbehoerde/komplettansicht https://archive.ph/20240926105720/https://www.zeit.de/2024/4...
Tsiklon 2y ago
Is there something to be said for “consumable” deep water off shore ports for contents that are “sensitive” like this? Diplomatically one can say “yes you can dock here and unload cargo, but we demand that it be off shore and away from otherwise sensitive infrastructure” This would allow such cargo to be offloaded safely in desperate circumstances while still maintaining the integrity of key infrastructure.
giardini 2y ago
Offload the cargo at sea to another boat? Barring that, flood it compartment by compartment and pump the fluid into other boats (to be later dried and re-packaged) or into the ocean (the ocean is big). Then bring the ship in to repair the hull or to salvage it.QED. This can all be done at sea. Of course, someone has to pay.
westcort 2y ago
Let it sink!
tim333 2y ago
I'm unclear where the ammonium nitrate was meant to be shipped to. You'd think they could continue to there, possibly with the aid of tugs.

204 points by itronitron 2y ago

Just leave it offshore then? I’m fairly certain ‘outside of territorial waters’ is equivalent to ‘more than 25km from shore’. It can safely explode there. If the crew want to get taken off their sinking ship they are more than welcome.

lnxg33k1 2y ago
Exactly my point of view, detonate it far away and let the insurance pay
- agent327 2y ago
  Is this your general view on all ships carrying fertiliser? Do you know how many people would starve to death if we stopped shipping fertiliser around the world?
  - lnxg33k1 2y ago
    I'm no starving expert, but is all fertiliser explosive?
    - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
      A lot of the useful ones are nitrate based. So, “sometimes”.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Only ships owned by countries we are more or less at war with and have a rich history of sabotage and assassinations. I think this is fairly self-evident. It’s quite similar to a trojan horse.
  - Hamuko 2y ago
    Are all ships carrying fertiliser damaged?

aftergibson 2y ago

The great sort of news you want to hear while drinking your morning coffee and living in Kent to the east of London.

lnxg33k1 2y ago
Be careful, if the coffee is too hot.. :D
samllmas 2y ago
Grab some popcorn instead
fanf2 2y ago
How far are you from the SS Richard Montgomery? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

Traubenfuchs 2y ago

Ships and their crews can‘t be cheap. Who paid to put the ammonium nirate on the ruby? Who paid for the ship to go somewhere? What was the original deal involving the ammonium nitrate? Did someone in another country originally plan to buy it but the deal was later cancelled? The ammonium nitrate cargo alone is worth several million us dollar.

illwrks 2y ago
Perhaps it was someone trying to get around sanctions on Russian imports, was found out and refused entry/ abandoned?
- protomolecule 2y ago
  There are no sanctions on Russian fertilizers. Europe's fertilizer production is down due to high natural gas prices (I wonder what happened) and import from Russia is up.
  - wewxjfq 2y ago
    Do you want to provide sources for these claims? I see Germany's fertilizer exports are down by 10%, while its fertilizer imports from Russia fell by 80%. Fertilizer production seems to be up, but this metric is tracked by value only.
    - protomolecule 2y ago
      "For some types of fertiliser, such as urea, imports have even increased since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The cheap fertiliser has helped European farmers, but the region’s own fertiliser producers have been struggling to compete. “We are right now being flooded by fertilisers from Russia, which are significantly cheaper than our fertilisers, for the simple reason that they pay peanuts for natural gas in comparison to us European producers,” said Petr Cingr, chief executive of SKW Stickstoffwerke Piesteritz, Germany’s largest producer of ammonia. “If politicians will not act,” he warned, Europe’s production capacity “will disappear”. ... A third of EU imports of urea, the cheapest form of nitrogen-based fertiliser, come from Russia, with the amount imported in 2023 close to record levels, Eurostat data shows. Poland’s imports of Russian urea climbed to almost $120mn in 2023, up from just over $84mn in 2021, for example, according to customs data. ... Other big players are leaving the market. BASF, the world’s largest chemicals group, has shrunk its operations in Europe over the past few years, including its fertiliser business, and instead focused new investments in the US and China, where costs are lower." [0] [0] https://archive.is/20240630042149/https://www.ft.com/content/8d4e6543-f210-4a26-9bed-93fd0c35b6e6 https://archive.is/20240630042149/https://www.ft.com/content...

willguest 2y ago

I love the word 'megabomb' as much as the next guy, and I'm about all threat escalation, but isn't ammonium nitrate also fertiliser? Since this is one of the main (and historic) exports from Russia, I would imagine that one or two cargo ships have carried the stuff before. A little more info on how it is stored/transported and under which eventualities the cargo would become bomb-like would give me a sense of journalistic satisfaction as an accompaniment to my sense of impending doom.

helpfulContrib 2y ago
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dtquad 2y ago
No, Russia is deliberately using this ship to harass NATO countries. The ship was recently unusually close to a NATO base in Norway before the Norwegian coast guard chased them away. Here in Denmark the Danish coast guard also had to confront the ship. The ship has enough Ammonium Nitrate to cause an explosion several times the size of the 2020 Beirut port explosion. Basically any other country with a faulty ship full of dangerous explosive material would tow the ship back and fix their own mess. Russia is instead using it as hybrid warfare against geopolitical adversaries.
- deleted 2y ago
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- protomolecule 2y ago
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  - practice9 2y ago
    The interesting thing is that ship was damaged almost immediately after leaving the port, had a chance to stop in Russian ports along the way but instead is doing a tour near EU countries. The crew is either amazingly incompetent or malicious/complicit. You don’t put a ship that can blow up near: a. Gas&oil terminals, b. military air base

rich_sasha 2y ago

I don't entirely follow the logic of the trip (but I know nothing about shipping). Tromso on the Norwegian Sea, then Klaipeda on the Baltic, now off the shore of Kent? That's very roundabout. It's easy to come up with explanations involving bad will. There must be some legit ones too. What are they trying to achieve? Did they buy some ammonium nitrate and are trying to offload it for a buyer, but successive ports are saying no? Surely whoever paid and loaded the cargo needed some idea of where and how they will offload it.

timthorn 2y ago
The vessel is looking for a port to berth in but keeps being turned away.
krona 2y ago
> That's very roundabout. Perhaps due to poor weather conditions in the past 14 days, especially given it has a cracked hull.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  Again, I'm ignorant about seafaring, but isn't bad weather a reason to avoid long trips?
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
    Bad weather is a reason to avoid bad weather. On the scale of a long voyage, weather is "local" and can be avoided either by picking a different route, or a different time (potentially hiding in a man-made or natural harbor where the ship is less exposed to the waves and weather due to the surrounding terrain).
Arnt 2y ago
That ship is only 183m long. If it was in an emergency, there were plenty of ports near Tromsø that can handle that. Even Murmansk isn't far away. Marine Traffic says it's under way to Malta.

lnxg33k1 2y ago

I'd say, bring it as far as you can from any human being, and detonate the shit out of it, it has like 7 times more shit on it than the one in Beirut? And you want to dock it somewhere? Since what happened in Beirut, how do we allow to have so much explosive on a single ship?

lazide 2y ago
It’s having the problems it’s having because no one allows a ship in with that much explosives on it anymore haha!
- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  I mean, it's a great solution right now to detonate it away from humans, but I was more wondering to disallow loading that much explosive in the first place, because I think long term it's not great for sealife to detonate 20k tons of explosive every now and then :D
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    Then get ready for the raise of the prices on agricultural products in Europe. What's explosive for you is fertilizer for the farmers.

Terr_ 2y ago

> Spurning the obvious solution of a return to Russia, where she loaded at Kandalaksha in late August, the damaged vessel embarked on an odyssey of attempted entry to European ports, beginning at the Norwegian anchorage of Tromsø This needs more explanation, does this mean the captain refused? Or Russian port authorities refused? Or they just... chose to limp in a particular direction? From another article [0]: > Not long after leaving the Russian port of Kandalaksha in late August, the general cargo vessel ran aground in a storm in Norwegian waters and a Port State inspection in Norway confirmed cracks in the hull and damage to the ship’s propeller and rudder. [0] https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in-the-channel-due-to-dangerous-cargo/ https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in...

Arnt 2y ago
It was allowed entry to Tromsø and stayed there for a few days without repairs.
alibarber 2y ago
Would you want to be a captain of an EU registered ship stuck in Russia for an indeterminate amount of time with limited ability to pay for (sanctions) repairs of an uncertain nature? Of course I have no real info on why but it does seem plausible that returning would be unattractive.
- chipdart 2y ago
  > Would you want to be a captain of an EU registered ship stuck in Russia for an indeterminate amount of time with limited ability to pay for (sanctions) repairs of an uncertain nature? Your hypothesis is quickly rejected/proven to be bullshit by the fact that the travel distance that the ship took after being rejected by Norway was greater than the distance it would need to take to get to a Russian port. And instead the ship planted itself where? Right in the middle of the English channel? We're talking about hitting ports from Norway, Lithuania, and now UK/France/Belgium?
  - wood_spirit 2y ago

oswalk 2y ago

Is it unfeasible to ship these kinds of things in smaller loads? Why would you put any kind of dangerous material that would "obliterate the center of any port city" in the same place without strong guarantees that nothing will go wrong? A boat does not seem like that kind of place.

lazide 2y ago
Hey, if you’re already packing ‘world destroying’ amounts of explosives and taking all the precautions, then why not make it 3x the amount?
dist-epoch 2y ago
This fertilizer is very difficult to detonate accidentally. Quite a few things need to go wrong. It's also used in huge quantities.
- op00to 2y ago
  It is very easy to detonate on purpose though. Perhaps by contaminating it with fuel oil from the ship itself. “By accident”.

londons_explore 2y ago

ammonium nitrate is safe till you accidentally mix it with something like fuel oil. It would be trivial for an inspector to go look and see if such mixing has occurred... and if it has not, let it into port to sell the cargo.

adastra22 2y ago
Ammonium nitrate is explosive by itself. It doesn’t need fuel or oxidizer. By adjusting its pH level the breakdown reaction can be prevented and the compound stabilized, but it decays over time or when improperly stored.
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  In my humble understanding among I’m nitrate is a oxidizer (or a precursor of it). Am I wrong ? How would it explode without a fuel ?
  - adastra22 2y ago
    2NH₄NO₃ (s) → 2N₂ (g) + O₂ (g) + 4H₂O (g) Only happens spontaneously at high temperature/pressure. But of course being an explosive reaction, once it starts in a little pocket of material, all the neighboring material experiences a lot of heat and pressure, and blows up. And then the next layer, and the next layer, etc. If improperly stored, pockets form with different pH values that cause it to spontaneously occur at lower temperatures. Or a spark, or a compressive event in an unstable patch, etc.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
      Or, if the ship is indeed being used as a weapon, a "small" hidden charge of military explosives that will be hard to find after a kiloton-scale explosion.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion suggests that pure AN is also explosive. As far as I know, the explosion that leveled part of Beirut was mostly assumed to be caused by uncontaminated AN too.

GaggiX 2y ago

I hope they evacuate the crew and bomb it in the middle of the ocean so we can film the explosion in 4K. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen.

abricot 2y ago
Sadly true. It will likely be 720p vertical.
- JBiserkov 2y ago
  And shaking horizontally, with a bit of rotational wobble.

londons_explore 2y ago

Notably, ammonium nitrate is fertilizer. It is also effectively 'natural gas in solid form' - the main input to making ammonium nitrate is natural gas.The main cost is the cost of the natural gas, and there are huge worldwide markets for both natural gas and fertilizer. Therefore, from an economics perspective, natural gas and fertilizer are pretty much tied together. Same as electricity and aluminium. Natural gas is hard to ship - whereas fertilizer is easy to ship. Since Russia has bountiful supplies of natural gas, and sanctions prevent it selling that gas to europe via pipeline, producing fertilizer and selling that to the rest of the world is a workaround.

cromka 2y ago
You make it sound as if you can produce natural gas out of a fertilizer.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  Yeah you just put it on grass then wait for cows to munch on the grass and burp.
- MrVandemar 2y ago
  The parent does not imply anywhere that you can produce natural gas out of fertiliser. * They state that natural gas is an input to the fertiliser product * They state that with sanctions on natural gas from Russia, converting it to fertiliser evades the sanctions, albeit by transforming it into a different but saleable product.
  - croes 2y ago
    I think they mean because of that part >It is also effectively 'natural gas in solid form'
- squarefoot 2y ago
  Would it be necessary if they could burn it in a controlled way that extracts an acceptable amount of energy? (Pure speculation of course, as I know nothing about the matter)

rdtsc 2y ago

> Ammonium nitrate is highly explosive, especially when exposed to fire Is that true? It seems, from a pedestrian perspective, if just fire could trigger it, they wouldn’t be transporting it in such amounts.

adastra22 2y ago
Just shaking it too much can trigger it, if stored improperly.
- rdtsc 2y ago
  If it gets wet or packed too tightly. Ah interesting. Yeah trusting Russian inspectors that they did their job is not a good idea.
albumen 2y ago
From the Wikipedia article [1]: "In the second case, the explosion results from a fire that spreads into the ammonium nitrate (AN) itself (Texas City, Brest, Tianjin, Beirut) or to a mixture of an ammonium nitrate with a combustible material during the fire. The fire must be confined at least to a degree for successful transition from a fire to an explosion (a phenomenon known as "deflagration to detonation transition", or DDT). Pure, compact AN is stable and very difficult to initiate. Ammonium nitrate decomposes in temperatures above 169 °C (336 °F). Pure AN is stable and will stop decomposing once the heat source is removed, but when catalysts are present, the reaction can become self-sustaining (known as self-sustaining decomposition, or SSD). This is a well-known hazard with some types of NPK fertilizers and is responsible for the loss of several cargo ships." [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_incidents_and_disasters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_inc...
SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
> if it was so unsafe, they wouldn’t be transporting it in such amounts. You'd think so, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion A classic example of how reasoning from logic alone is no match actual knowledge of reality. Or perhaps, in this specific case, the unsafeness is the point: it's intended to harass.

roenxi 2y ago

The hybrid war angle is wild conspiracy theorising. If the Russians wanted to blow up an English city they might as well drop bombs on it directly. I still wouldn't want to be near a fertiliser ship though so it'd be reasonable to tell it to go somewhere else.

wslh 2y ago
The world is full of complexities and often misunderstood events. Applying higher-order thinking, such as realpolitik and game theory, can provide a more nuanced understanding of global dynamics. After centuries of dismissing concerns as mere "conspiracy theories" it's important to recognize that this may not be a theory, but rather a potential warning.
tgv 2y ago
How are they going to drop a bomb on it? Bomber? Rocket? If a ship explodes, Putin will deny everything, and grudgingly everyone will accept it, because you can't be certain, and we don't want war. But if a long-range bomber leaves Russia, flies to Liverpool and drops a bomb, it's an open declaration of war.
cromka 2y ago
Blowing up a ship offers way more plausibility. It’s not hard to imagine it would leave NATO without response. Not so much with the actual bombs.
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
Dropping normal bombs on it is highly identifiable and attributable, and not very damaging. Also, a normal bomber or cruise missile might actually get shot down. There would be no doubt about Article 5 and the need for a military response. Dropping a nuke on it is equally or more damaging, but likewise highly identifiable and attributable, and would force an even bigger reaction, likely even by China. Also, again, might be shot down. An explosion of a cargo ship is just as damaging as a small nuke, but cannot be immediately identified as an attack - even if people suspect it, it's hard to conclusively prove that it wasn't an accident. This makes it hard to muster a unified and strong response.

chipdart 2y ago

> While Lithuanian authorities announced there was no evidence of malicious intent against the country’s national security, they noted that when dealing with Russia, or other unfriendly international actors, states should always be cautious. This bears repeating. Russia has bee actively engaged in low-intensity warfare with the west for decades, and has single-handledly escalated their aggression towards the west in general but western Europe in particular for the last couple of years to the point they overtly and very publicly threaten the world with all sorts of attacks and global annihilation. Once Russia tries to casually float a massive bomb right into your doorstep, only a massive moron would not mitigate the risk presented by Russia, even if considered implausible.

dtquad 2y ago
Russia found out they had a faulty dangerous explosive ship under their control and instead of safely towing the ship to Russia and unload the Russian cargo they are instead using it to harass NATO countries as part of their hybrid warfare. The ship has been featured extensively in Danish and Norwegian media. First the Russians attempted to get the explosive ship close to a NATO base in Norway before the Norwegian coast guard chased them away. The Danish coast guard also had to confront them. The ship contains several times more Ammonium Nitrate than what caused the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- samllmas 2y ago
  7x Beirut or 1/3 power of Hiroshima according to the article (although would it cause as much damage as a nuke detonated in the air?)
  - sixthDot 2y ago
    No, equal TNT power equivalent can have different effect depending on the nature of the explosive. The heat spreaded from an amonium nitrate blast, like in Beyrut, does not last as long, from [0], > However even on this basis, comparing the actual energy yields of a large nuclear device and an explosion of TNT can be slightly inaccurate. Small TNT explosions, especially in the open, don't tend to burn the carbon-particle and hydrocarbon products of the explosion. Gas-expansion and pressure-change effects tend to "freeze" the burn rapidly. A large open explosion of TNT may maintain fireball temperatures high enough so that some of those products do burn up with atmospheric oxygen [...] See also the "Relative effectiveness factor" paragraph [1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effect...

louthy 2y ago

Here’s its current location: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1605/mmsi:229041000/imo:9626390/vessel:RUBY https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:16...

aaron695 2y ago

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qwery 2y ago

I don't know much about CEPA (this is the first time I've come across them) but I don't think they're the best source for news. This article is extremely inflammatory, frames the entire story around Russia and seems to be extremely selective with which details were included. The article is stuffed with problems but I'll point out just a couple of examples: > Maltese-registered cargo ship This appears to be a deliberate attempt to cast doubt as to the "true" operator or entity controlling the vessel. The ship is "Maltese-registered" because it's owned by a Maltese company, 'Ruby Enterprise'. It's destination is Malta. > Spurning the obvious solution of a return to Russia, Is this obvious? As the article admits, the vessel is seaworthy. Why would a seaworthy ship carrying some exported product return to the origin port? I think this BBC article[0] offers a much more balanced take on the events. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g95721leo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g95721leo

jojobas 2y ago
Yeah, cause Russians couldn't afford a front in Malta of all places, or play the crew blind.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
  A Russian front in a small corruptible EU state in the Mediterranean (e.g. Malta, Cyprus) would not be a surprise at all. See many news articles e.g. https://www.eureporter.co/world/malta/2023/08/09/malta-has-a-soft-spot-for-russian-money/ https://www.eureporter.co/world/malta/2023/08/09/malta-has-a... https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/cyprus-model-politics-tax-haven-russian-wealth/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/cypr...
  - jojobas 2y ago
    That is exactly my point.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
      Sure. I thought though that it might need spelling out to some of the audience here who are far removed from that part of the world. I myself didn't know it until I visited Malta and Cyprus.

bborud 2y ago

I'm assuming this is the ship? https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1605/mmsi:229041000/imo:9626390/vessel:RUBY#overview https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:16... Anyone have a Marine Traffic account and can tell us about its movements?

sorokod 2y ago
No account required: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9626390 https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9626390
- bborud 2y ago
  That just tells me where it is now. You need an account to see where it has been for the last N days.
  - sorokod 2y ago
    Ah true, not exactly what you are looking for but according to this article [1] : Kandalaksha Tromsø Klaipeda Gothenburg [1] https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in-the-channel-due-to-dangerous-cargo/ https://theloadstar.com/baltic-ports-bar-damaged-ruby-now-in...

yawpitch 2y ago

For the non-boaters, “heaves to” means “has stopped” in this context.

aAKagh 2y ago

The only Western asset that has been sabotaged was Nordstream, by either the U.S. or the Ukrainians (now the official story is that Zalushny ordered it). CEPA is a propaganda site: https://cepa.org/article/wake-up-nato-its-sabotage/ https://cepa.org/article/wake-up-nato-its-sabotage/ "European energy security and the continent’s critical infrastructure are the core pillars of Transatlantic security. Safeguarding them is fundamental to ensuring democratic resilience and stability." In light of Nordstream, this is hypocritical and offensive to Western Europeans who suffer the economic consequences. Yes, the Russian invasion is bad, yes, they should get out of Ukraine, but repeatedly manufacturing additional stories is counterproductive.

simion314 2y ago
What about Eastern Europe, some ammo depo sabotaged by Ruzzians? Sabotaging GPS that affected air traffice ?
- rhagsf 2y ago
  What about it? "ammo depo sabotaged" does not yield any meaningful search results. If it were confirmed, certainly The Telegraph and the New York Times would shout it from the rooftops. The GPS jamming is classified by the Finnish transport agency as a "side effect of Russia's anti-drone activities": https://www.politico.eu/article/gps-jamming-is-a-side-effect-of-russian-military-activity-finnish-transport-agency-says/ https://www.politico.eu/article/gps-jamming-is-a-side-effect... "Jamming GPS signals over the Baltic Sea is “most likely” a side effect of Russia's anti-drone activities, Traficom, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, said today. “The interference intensified when Ukraine's drone attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure began in January 2024,” Traficom said in a press release. Estonia also blames Russia for the signal jamming, but the Finnish agency doesn't agree with the Tallinn government in defining the interference as a hybrid attack."
  - simion314 2y ago
    [flagged]

qwertox 2y ago

Can't it be dragged to the Kaliningrad port? That would be the perfect place to store the ammonium nitrate.

malomalsky 2y ago

This is how I found out that Russia is burning down IKEA warehouses in Europe xD

protomolecule 2y ago
Nope, you've found that somebody alleges that without any proof. There is a difference.

lolc 2y ago

One thing that's only lightly touched upon in the article: Is this journey unusual and where is the fertilizer usually unloaded? The way the article is written, the ship's operators may with plausible deniability be deliberately targeting ports where a blast would be most debilitating for NATO. But where are other ships with this fertilizer unloading? It must be a common operation in European ports. Are there special ports for this, and the captain is spurning them? Ostensibly because they want to dock for repairs? Now that I think about it, while it could be hard to sell that much fertilizer from a port where it wasn't ordered to, transfering it to another vessel not in need of repairs would solve the whole situation overnight wouldn't it? That's expensive but should be normal procedure I'd expect. So yeah what are the operators up to?

senectus1 2y ago

Its an interesting scenario. because if the ship suddenly decided to turn around and head for the closest, most densely populated costal city... what can they do about it? Blow it up? its ALREADY close enough to cause significant damage. Somehow sink it without detonating it? The environmental damage alone would be devistating to the econcomy... if this is a russian plot, it's already increadibly successfull.

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
Nukes aren't a perfect model for a ship full of explosive fertilizer, but a reasonable enough approximation/upper bound for which we can easily find formulas/calculators online. A 15 kiloton nuke has a 1 psi radius of about 3 km according to https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/# https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/# So a possible solution would indeed be stopping it by any means necessary somewhere between the 22 km mark (where it enters territorial waters) and the 3 km mark where it becomes a serious hazard.
dist-epoch 2y ago
You just use tugboats to push it away, and protect the tugboats with coast guard vessels. The only environmental damage would be from the ship fuel. The fertilizer is not a problem, maybe it would cause a short term algae boom.
pvaldes 2y ago
> head for the closest, most densely populated costal city. London actually.

FollowingTheDao 2y ago

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

portaouflop 2y ago

TIL you could wreck the whole international economy/market/political order with a few well placed shipwrecks

iamtedd 2y ago
Not even a few. Just one. In the Suez.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

Russia sent a tugboat to Cuba. They can easily rescue the ship if they wanted.

bartread 2y ago

Sorry, but this stinks to high heaven, and what it stinks of is bullshit. If the cargo is Russian and you legitimately want to dock for repairs, then why try Tromsø, Klaipėda, and then anchor the ship off the UK coast? If you legitimately need to dock for repairs why not dock at Kaliningrad? The cargo is after all Russian so let them deal with the problem. You have to literally sail past Kaliningrad to get to the English channel in any case, so it's hardly surprising that people port authorities are cautious if not outright suspicious.

grues-dinner 2y ago
Because it was damaged in northern Norway, and requested permission to go to Klaipeda, in the Baltic. Lithuania said no, unless it unloads first. The Lithuanians said, two weeks ago, they'd found a port in Norway that agreed to unload, near where it was stopped. Presumably that fell though and thus the permission was withdrawn. Then Denmark refused access to the Baltic, and Gothenburg also then said no. The ship never entered the Baltic as far as I can tell. The implication is that the ship didn't want to go back to Murmansk. Possibly it was also denied entry, or doesn't want to get stuck there over winter if the Russians can't or won't repair the ship. It's not a Russian ship, it might not even be Russian-owned cargo any more, depending on the INCOTERMS, why would they make the effort if no one else will? https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2358770/ship-with-russian-chemicals-will-not-be-allowed-into-klaipeda-port-pm https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2358770/ship-with-r...

kkfx 2y ago

Curiously no one say who have bought the fertilizer... Ask yourself why, to ask yourself why the war in the first place.

czottmann 2y ago

Combine that story with the recent, substantial reports about hapless pseudo-mercenary "disposable agents" bought by Russian intelligence, and the whole thing feels even more icky. Have that ship dock somewhere, and some idiot assets who don't know what they got themselves into infiltrate it to start a fire or something, for a few hundred bucks. See this article from German newspaper ZEIT (auto-translated using Google Translate): https://www-zeit-de.translate.goog/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agenten-geheimdienst-sicherheitsbehoerde/komplettansicht?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-zeit-de.translate.goog/2024/41/russische-sabotag... > The disposable agents > Russia is waging a war of sabotage against the West. Initially with graffiti, now with arson attacks. The perpetrators are young men who have no idea who they are serving. Original German-language article at https://www.zeit.de/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agenten-geheimdienst-sicherheitsbehoerde/komplettansicht https://www.zeit.de/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agent... Archived at https://archive.ph/20240926105720/https://www.zeit.de/2024/41/russische-sabotage-wegwerf-agenten-geheimdienst-sicherheitsbehoerde/komplettansicht https://archive.ph/20240926105720/https://www.zeit.de/2024/4...

Tsiklon 2y ago

Is there something to be said for “consumable” deep water off shore ports for contents that are “sensitive” like this? Diplomatically one can say “yes you can dock here and unload cargo, but we demand that it be off shore and away from otherwise sensitive infrastructure” This would allow such cargo to be offloaded safely in desperate circumstances while still maintaining the integrity of key infrastructure.

giardini 2y ago

Offload the cargo at sea to another boat? Barring that, flood it compartment by compartment and pump the fluid into other boats (to be later dried and re-packaged) or into the ocean (the ocean is big). Then bring the ship in to repair the hull or to salvage it.QED. This can all be done at sea. Of course, someone has to pay.

westcort 2y ago

Let it sink!

tim333 2y ago

I'm unclear where the ammonium nitrate was meant to be shipped to. You'd think they could continue to there, possibly with the aid of tugs.