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.
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.
That too, see the Beirut port explosion incident: 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
Simple to become a powerful explosive
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Back to my question: 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.
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.
If you are going to dismiss it: dismiss it with facts and arguments. Don't just lazily downvote it.
As for you accusing me of posting flame-bait: that's not very nice. I presume you have some way of proving your speculation?
Grandparent, not you. I'm not speculating about anything, please re-read my comment.
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.
I would be less inclined to believe if such strategies weren't as commonly employed. But, they are.
This tends to not make international news as this activity isn't exceptional. It just varies in intensity and scope over time.
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.
…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?
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.
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.
The people Russia is sending to their deaths in their meat wave tactics aren't exactly Russian military either. They are at best civilians under contract and moved to front lines weeks if not days after being hired.
Then there are the civilians pressed into service such as unsuspecting immigrants and Ukrainians who found themselves in occupied territories.
The key factor is complete disrespect for those under your control, and willingness to sacrifice themselves for the smallest reason.
Margate may not be luxurious, but it's not a Ukrainian front line.
The only evidence that it's anything other than a damaged ship in a shit situation (even shitter than your average Syrian/UAE cargo ship, which is probably saying something) with a very low chance of a very big explosion, trying to find somewhere to put in, is that the word "megabomb" makes good headlines and people want to have exciting things happen, even if "it" is blowing up a town, no matter how dreary, from 12 miles away with what would presumably be the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history.
https://www.ft.com/content/b9396112-585a-4f7e-9628-13d500c99...
There's a difference between a lack of imagination and a lack of credulity for any breathless headline.
I'd far rather be crew on this ship than on HMS Campbeltown.