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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 m

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
    - protomolecule 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - op00to 2y ago
        Perhaps the crew was not given a choice.
        protomolecule 2y ago
        And they were like "ok, we'll die for Mother Russia"
        grues-dinner 2y ago
        ...said the Filipino deck hand to the Egyptian navigator, no less. (I don't know what nationalities the ship's crew has, but based on the ship's ownership, it would be pretty unlikely to be all Russian unless they've already disposed of and replaced the entire crew). So not only is there now a suicidal crew of mad Russians, but they also killed the old crew. They just keep getting more dastardly! They probably caused the bad weather too! Andøya is usually so lovely this time of year! Actually this rampant speculation thing is quite fun. I should sell this stuff to whoever is running the Tom Clancy estate.
        op00to 2y ago
        As opposed to what? Jump off the boat into the water?
- cromka 2y ago
  You don’t know that, this is pure speculation.
  - noselasd 2y ago
    Seems pretty accurate, no ? The ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut was 2,750 tonnes, this ships is carrying about 20,000 tonnes
    - ErikBjare 2y ago
      It's not the same. Storage conditions matter.
      - lb1lf 2y ago
        That is true, but given the current level of trust between Russian and 'Western' authorities, would it not be prudent to assume the vessel is indeed a threat and keep it away from infrastructure and the general population if at all possible? In the case of Arctic Norway, there are plenty of unpopulated, sheltered fjords. No need to dock it in a commercial port in an urban area.
      - Lio 2y ago
        > Storage conditions matter. …only if it hasn’t been deliberately sabotaged. It’s had opportunities to return to Russian ports and just sailed right by them. Why is it desperate to dock in a Western port?
        mulmen 2y ago
        I don’t know but it’s easy to imagine why an international crew would chose to be stranded in the west instead of Russia.
  - xattt 2y ago
    Didn’t they try to dock in two infrastructure-critical ports with a damaged vessel? How about the order of the docking? There must be some sort of remote outport where it can dock without the fear of obliterating critical infrastructure. Chances are it docks, it gets abandoned because there’s no money to fix it, and it stays conveniently parked until an “unfortunate” fire happens. Plausible deniability is the modus operandi of Russian operations. Borderline Personality Disorder-style scorched earth retaliation is more so.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  If this were a threat, how would the Russians coerce a ship full of sailors to not surrender or abandon the ship rather than choose between vaporisation or arrest or death by navy when trying to escape the aftermath (assuming they even have boats that can get away from the blast)?
  - wavefunction 2y ago
    What if Russia cut the normal radio with a crew of dispensable third-worlders dummies like you suffer from a DEFICIT OF IMAGINATION
    - grues-dinner 2y ago
      How would they have been turned away from ports, or even hope to get into a port, without a working radio (but still a working AIS)? There's a difference between a lack of imagination and a lack of credulity for any breathless headline.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > (...) how would the Russians coerce a ship full of sailors to not surrender or abandon the ship rather than choose between vaporisation or arrest or death by (...) Have you paid any attention to Russia's meatwave tactics in Ukraine that so far already piled up half a million of Russian casualties? If you did, you wouldn't be considering this scenario implausible, because we see videos of said Russians needlessly marching towards their deaths on a daily basis.
    - grues-dinner 2y ago
      Are the sailors actually Russian military? Or are there suicidal commissars on board along with them to put a gun in their backs 1000km from home? I'm not saying it not possible, but the fact that there isn't a rather more concerted response involving, say, the SBS or an encounter with an Astute within the last several weeks while it's been tooling around the North Sea implies that the intelligence services don't consider it as much of an actual active threat as the media circus wants it to be. Certainly if there was even a breath of Russian military on the ship, I don't think "hey sure, just drop anchor outside Margate and chill next to these other ships and right by the Thames and Channel shipping lanes" would be the call they'd make.
- bborud 2y ago
  For those who downvote the above, yes it presents speculation as if verified fact, but what it puts forth is actually plausible when you see how Russian military efforts tend to make use of uncertainty. If you are going to dismiss it: dismiss it with facts and arguments. Don't just lazily downvote it.
  - orbital-decay 2y ago
    Just to be clear, you want HN users put effort into a rebuttal of the factless speculation presented as a fact? This isn't how discussions work, this is flamebait (just like the article itself) and has no place on HN. This doesn't contribute to the discussion, and should be downvoted and flagged.
    - bborud 2y ago
      The two last statements of the post are indeed speculation. What was said up until that point can be verified. However, the speculation should be seen in light of recent history. Russia does have a history of shady maritime dealings covered by deniability. For instance you have probably heard of cables that have been mysteriously cut in the northern regions. As for you accusing me of posting flame-bait: that's not very nice. I presume you have some way of proving your speculation?
      - orbital-decay 2y ago
        >As for you accusing me of posting flame-bait Grandparent, not you. I'm not speculating about anything, please re-read my comment.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  This is quite possible, equally though, what is stopping all these countries from simply refusing access to territorial waters for this ship. It seems to be travelling for thousands of miles just fine, so can't claim emergency shelter, and even then the danger to third parties seems to justify any refusals. The crew is likely tiny and easy to rescue if need be. I can imagine this being a simple ruse to annoy NATO countries and their navies too, that wouldn't be out if character, but beyond that... That would be a very petty hybrid risk. Or maybe Russia is just trying lots of things just to see what sticks..? From my side, while I think using a semi damaged ship as a hybrid threat would be within the Russian MO, it also seems like an easy one to protect against.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > This is quite possible, equally though, what is stopping all these countries from simply refusing access to territorial waters for this ship. Note that for the ship to travel between Lithuania and Norway/UK, it needs to pass by Kaliningrad. For some reason the ship didn't stop there. The ship also didn't went from Lithuania to st Petersburg. Why was that?
    - rich_sasha 2y ago
      I get that, and it is odd. Though Russia can also wash its hands off of that ship. IIRC it is Maltese-flagged, owned by a Maltese company, and the crew is international. It "just so happens" that it contracts for Russian cargos. Russia may perhaps (?) be the ultimate beneficiary but it's also not strictly speaking Russian. Back to my question: can all these justifiably concerned countries not simply refuse access for this ship, end of story?
      - grues-dinner 2y ago
        > can all these justifiably concerned countries not simply refuse access for this ship, end of story Pretty much. Entire crews can be (and are) abandoned in international waters for years at a time if the company decides they don't want to deal with the ship any more. Which makes some sense as to why the crew would bring the ship down to the North Sea from the far northern Norwegian coast (weather this week: down to 2 degrees C, wind up to 40mph). If you think you might be abandoned in late September, and ports in Murmansk and Arkangelsk could also decide not to admit you, do you want to overwinter at sea in the Arctic, or go literally anywhere else? And that's if the company does forsake them, which is also a hypothetical. More likely, the company also would probably rather the ship is not at risk of being disabled in the Arctic considering they presumably couldn't get a guarantee readmittance to the port of origin and decided to at least get to relative safety down south with better weather and near countries that at least plausibly would lift a finger if the ship really was at risk.
- klibertp 2y ago
  I'm not sure if this can be described as "warfare"- hybrid or not. You'd need to call the migrants boats that "harass" Italian ports a tool of war, too. Maybe that's warranted, but to me, it sounds like an unnecessary escalation. Obviously, the ship shouldn't be used in such a way, but I would save the war-like language for a situation where it tries to ram its way into a port against the coastal guard commands.
sorokod 2y ago
> ... but isn't ammonium nitrate also fertiliser? That too, see the Beirut port explosion incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion Going by the article, the ship carries an order of magnitude more ammonium nitrate then the amount that detonated in Beirut
- newsclues 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO Simple to become a powerful explosive
rnhmjoj 2y ago
It's probably a fertiliser shipment, but if it were to explode while unloading the intended use does not matter much. If you've seen some footage from the Beirut port explosion in 2020, calling something 7 times as large a 'megabomb' is not inappropriate.
- ErikBjare 2y ago
  Experts have said in Swedish media that no such risk exists due to how it's packed/stored, unless someone intentionally mixes it with "organics" or stores it with fireworks (as in Beirut).
  - neuroelectron 2y ago
    Are you saying Beirut was intentional?
    - petre 2y ago
      Who cares, it's quite enough to reason to refuse a ship to dock in port. The Beirut ship also had a Russian owner. The AN was bound to Mozambique to be used for explosives.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
    Organics such as fuel oil, which the ship likely has on board and might also refuel. If it accidentally or "accidentally" leaks into the AN, you get ANFO, "a widely used bulk industrial high explosive". If Russia wants to nuke an European port city without using an actual nuke and while being able to at least leave some doubt whether it may have just been an accident, this certainly looks like a plausible way.
  - sorokod 2y ago
    Looks like some experts in Sweden disagreed, Ruby was denied entry to Gothenburg.
- gmuslera 2y ago
  There are or were this kind of fertilizer shipments from other dates or countries that weren’t cataloged as megabombs? Maybe even bigger. A weapon is a weapon no matter who holds it. If coming from other sources, maybe in even bigger amounts, it is seen as something normal, then we are not talking about the ship.
Arnt 2y ago
https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/industry-and-energy/cargo-of-ammonium-nitrate-got-port-of-refuge-next-to-university-hospital-of-north-norway/123086 https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/industry-and-energy/cargo... I guess the key is that after a few days in Tromsø, the authorities still didn't know what kind of repair was needed, and called bullshit.
- gizajob 2y ago
  Yeah it seems to be taking quite a tour for a faulty ship…
spuz 2y ago
> 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. I agree. In fact the premise of the article - that this should be treated as a threat from Russia - hangs on the understanding that there is a legitimate reason a European port would accept a ship carrying this cargo. So how many such shipments are regularly made from Russia to Europe? What ports are designated to accept them? What safety measures do they have to handle the cargo? In what way is this particular ship different from those legitimate ones? Without this information, the article is incomplete. If there are no such legitimate shipments the article cannot claim there is any ambiguity about the threat posed by this ship.
- Arnt 2y ago
  There are many shipments of that cargo. What's unusual is to declare an emergency and then not order repairs quickly.
deleted 2y ago
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barryrandall 2y ago
It could just be fertilizer, but Russian sailors are known to be reckless and often dangerously incompetent. Given that Russia's national interests are served by an explosion regardless of cause, it's just not safe to let them anywhere near shore.

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
[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
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - op00to 2y ago
      Perhaps the crew was not given a choice.
      - protomolecule 2y ago
        And they were like "ok, we'll die for Mother Russia"
        grues-dinner 2y ago
        ...said the Filipino deck hand to the Egyptian navigator, no less. (I don't know what nationalities the ship's crew has, but based on the ship's ownership, it would be pretty unlikely to be all Russian unless they've already disposed of and replaced the entire crew). So not only is there now a suicidal crew of mad Russians, but they also killed the old crew. They just keep getting more dastardly! They probably caused the bad weather too! Andøya is usually so lovely this time of year! Actually this rampant speculation thing is quite fun. I should sell this stuff to whoever is running the Tom Clancy estate.
        op00to 2y ago
        As opposed to what? Jump off the boat into the water?
cromka 2y ago
You don’t know that, this is pure speculation.
- noselasd 2y ago
  Seems pretty accurate, no ? The ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut was 2,750 tonnes, this ships is carrying about 20,000 tonnes
  - ErikBjare 2y ago
    It's not the same. Storage conditions matter.
    - lb1lf 2y ago
      That is true, but given the current level of trust between Russian and 'Western' authorities, would it not be prudent to assume the vessel is indeed a threat and keep it away from infrastructure and the general population if at all possible? In the case of Arctic Norway, there are plenty of unpopulated, sheltered fjords. No need to dock it in a commercial port in an urban area.
    - Lio 2y ago
      > Storage conditions matter. …only if it hasn’t been deliberately sabotaged. It’s had opportunities to return to Russian ports and just sailed right by them. Why is it desperate to dock in a Western port?
      - mulmen 2y ago
        I don’t know but it’s easy to imagine why an international crew would chose to be stranded in the west instead of Russia.
- xattt 2y ago
  Didn’t they try to dock in two infrastructure-critical ports with a damaged vessel? How about the order of the docking? There must be some sort of remote outport where it can dock without the fear of obliterating critical infrastructure. Chances are it docks, it gets abandoned because there’s no money to fix it, and it stays conveniently parked until an “unfortunate” fire happens. Plausible deniability is the modus operandi of Russian operations. Borderline Personality Disorder-style scorched earth retaliation is more so.
grues-dinner 2y ago
If this were a threat, how would the Russians coerce a ship full of sailors to not surrender or abandon the ship rather than choose between vaporisation or arrest or death by navy when trying to escape the aftermath (assuming they even have boats that can get away from the blast)?
- wavefunction 2y ago
  What if Russia cut the normal radio with a crew of dispensable third-worlders dummies like you suffer from a DEFICIT OF IMAGINATION
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    How would they have been turned away from ports, or even hope to get into a port, without a working radio (but still a working AIS)? There's a difference between a lack of imagination and a lack of credulity for any breathless headline.
- chipdart 2y ago
  > (...) how would the Russians coerce a ship full of sailors to not surrender or abandon the ship rather than choose between vaporisation or arrest or death by (...) Have you paid any attention to Russia's meatwave tactics in Ukraine that so far already piled up half a million of Russian casualties? If you did, you wouldn't be considering this scenario implausible, because we see videos of said Russians needlessly marching towards their deaths on a daily basis.
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    Are the sailors actually Russian military? Or are there suicidal commissars on board along with them to put a gun in their backs 1000km from home? I'm not saying it not possible, but the fact that there isn't a rather more concerted response involving, say, the SBS or an encounter with an Astute within the last several weeks while it's been tooling around the North Sea implies that the intelligence services don't consider it as much of an actual active threat as the media circus wants it to be. Certainly if there was even a breath of Russian military on the ship, I don't think "hey sure, just drop anchor outside Margate and chill next to these other ships and right by the Thames and Channel shipping lanes" would be the call they'd make.
bborud 2y ago
For those who downvote the above, yes it presents speculation as if verified fact, but what it puts forth is actually plausible when you see how Russian military efforts tend to make use of uncertainty. If you are going to dismiss it: dismiss it with facts and arguments. Don't just lazily downvote it.
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  Just to be clear, you want HN users put effort into a rebuttal of the factless speculation presented as a fact? This isn't how discussions work, this is flamebait (just like the article itself) and has no place on HN. This doesn't contribute to the discussion, and should be downvoted and flagged.
  - bborud 2y ago
    The two last statements of the post are indeed speculation. What was said up until that point can be verified. However, the speculation should be seen in light of recent history. Russia does have a history of shady maritime dealings covered by deniability. For instance you have probably heard of cables that have been mysteriously cut in the northern regions. As for you accusing me of posting flame-bait: that's not very nice. I presume you have some way of proving your speculation?
    - orbital-decay 2y ago
      >As for you accusing me of posting flame-bait Grandparent, not you. I'm not speculating about anything, please re-read my comment.
rich_sasha 2y ago
This is quite possible, equally though, what is stopping all these countries from simply refusing access to territorial waters for this ship. It seems to be travelling for thousands of miles just fine, so can't claim emergency shelter, and even then the danger to third parties seems to justify any refusals. The crew is likely tiny and easy to rescue if need be. I can imagine this being a simple ruse to annoy NATO countries and their navies too, that wouldn't be out if character, but beyond that... That would be a very petty hybrid risk. Or maybe Russia is just trying lots of things just to see what sticks..? From my side, while I think using a semi damaged ship as a hybrid threat would be within the Russian MO, it also seems like an easy one to protect against.
- chipdart 2y ago
  > This is quite possible, equally though, what is stopping all these countries from simply refusing access to territorial waters for this ship. Note that for the ship to travel between Lithuania and Norway/UK, it needs to pass by Kaliningrad. For some reason the ship didn't stop there. The ship also didn't went from Lithuania to st Petersburg. Why was that?
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    I get that, and it is odd. Though Russia can also wash its hands off of that ship. IIRC it is Maltese-flagged, owned by a Maltese company, and the crew is international. It "just so happens" that it contracts for Russian cargos. Russia may perhaps (?) be the ultimate beneficiary but it's also not strictly speaking Russian. Back to my question: can all these justifiably concerned countries not simply refuse access for this ship, end of story?
    - grues-dinner 2y ago
      > can all these justifiably concerned countries not simply refuse access for this ship, end of story Pretty much. Entire crews can be (and are) abandoned in international waters for years at a time if the company decides they don't want to deal with the ship any more. Which makes some sense as to why the crew would bring the ship down to the North Sea from the far northern Norwegian coast (weather this week: down to 2 degrees C, wind up to 40mph). If you think you might be abandoned in late September, and ports in Murmansk and Arkangelsk could also decide not to admit you, do you want to overwinter at sea in the Arctic, or go literally anywhere else? And that's if the company does forsake them, which is also a hypothetical. More likely, the company also would probably rather the ship is not at risk of being disabled in the Arctic considering they presumably couldn't get a guarantee readmittance to the port of origin and decided to at least get to relative safety down south with better weather and near countries that at least plausibly would lift a finger if the ship really was at risk.
klibertp 2y ago
I'm not sure if this can be described as "warfare"- hybrid or not. You'd need to call the migrants boats that "harass" Italian ports a tool of war, too. Maybe that's warranted, but to me, it sounds like an unnecessary escalation. Obviously, the ship shouldn't be used in such a way, but I would save the war-like language for a situation where it tries to ram its way into a port against the coastal guard commands.

sorokod 2y ago

> ... but isn't ammonium nitrate also fertiliser? That too, see the Beirut port explosion incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion Going by the article, the ship carries an order of magnitude more ammonium nitrate then the amount that detonated in Beirut

newsclues 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO Simple to become a powerful explosive

rnhmjoj 2y ago

It's probably a fertiliser shipment, but if it were to explode while unloading the intended use does not matter much. If you've seen some footage from the Beirut port explosion in 2020, calling something 7 times as large a 'megabomb' is not inappropriate.

ErikBjare 2y ago
Experts have said in Swedish media that no such risk exists due to how it's packed/stored, unless someone intentionally mixes it with "organics" or stores it with fireworks (as in Beirut).
- neuroelectron 2y ago
  Are you saying Beirut was intentional?
  - petre 2y ago
    Who cares, it's quite enough to reason to refuse a ship to dock in port. The Beirut ship also had a Russian owner. The AN was bound to Mozambique to be used for explosives.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  Organics such as fuel oil, which the ship likely has on board and might also refuel. If it accidentally or "accidentally" leaks into the AN, you get ANFO, "a widely used bulk industrial high explosive". If Russia wants to nuke an European port city without using an actual nuke and while being able to at least leave some doubt whether it may have just been an accident, this certainly looks like a plausible way.
- sorokod 2y ago
  Looks like some experts in Sweden disagreed, Ruby was denied entry to Gothenburg.
gmuslera 2y ago
There are or were this kind of fertilizer shipments from other dates or countries that weren’t cataloged as megabombs? Maybe even bigger. A weapon is a weapon no matter who holds it. If coming from other sources, maybe in even bigger amounts, it is seen as something normal, then we are not talking about the ship.

Arnt 2y ago

https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/industry-and-energy/cargo-of-ammonium-nitrate-got-port-of-refuge-next-to-university-hospital-of-north-norway/123086 https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/industry-and-energy/cargo... I guess the key is that after a few days in Tromsø, the authorities still didn't know what kind of repair was needed, and called bullshit.

gizajob 2y ago
Yeah it seems to be taking quite a tour for a faulty ship…

spuz 2y ago

> 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. I agree. In fact the premise of the article - that this should be treated as a threat from Russia - hangs on the understanding that there is a legitimate reason a European port would accept a ship carrying this cargo. So how many such shipments are regularly made from Russia to Europe? What ports are designated to accept them? What safety measures do they have to handle the cargo? In what way is this particular ship different from those legitimate ones? Without this information, the article is incomplete. If there are no such legitimate shipments the article cannot claim there is any ambiguity about the threat posed by this ship.

Arnt 2y ago
There are many shipments of that cargo. What's unusual is to declare an emergency and then not order repairs quickly.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

barryrandall 2y ago

It could just be fertilizer, but Russian sailors are known to be reckless and often dangerously incompetent. Given that Russia's national interests are served by an explosion regardless of cause, it's just not safe to let them anywhere near shore.