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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 g

by 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
  - 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.

by dtquad 2y ago

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
- 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.