The MV Ruby, a ship carrying a highly explosive Russian cargo, is damaged and looking for a port. Whether or not this is hybrid warfare, the threat is

Floating Megabomb Heaves to Near the English Coast

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2024-09-29 09:00:02

The MV Ruby, a ship carrying a highly explosive Russian cargo, is damaged and looking for a port. Whether or not this is hybrid warfare, the threat is clear.

The Maltese-registered cargo ship, carrying 20,000 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate, triggered alarm bells in Western capitals when the vessel sustained damage and began to seek permission to unload its lethal cargo.

She is currently seaworthy but unmoving some miles off the coast of Kent, to the east of London, and just outside UK territorial waters.

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, a naval base that she was ordered to leave on September 4. Ruby then sought permission to dock at Klaipėda in Lithuania, a critical NATO reinforcement facility in time of crisis and war.

Lithuania refused because of the dangerous nature of the cargo. If 20,000 tons of ammonium nitrate were to detonate, it would obliterate the center of any port city — the blast would be equal to a third of the 1945 Hiroshima bomb. That would be a repeat of the devastating explosion of the same substance in Beirut in 2020, although Ruby is carrying seven times more ammonium nitrate.