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Floating megabomb heaves to near the English coast

The MV Ruby, a ship carrying a highly explosive Russian cargo, is damaged and looking for a port. The threat is clear.

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. The physical sabotage includes acts such as a fire at an IKEA storage facility in Lithuania, which helped fuel false narratives about the safety and reliability of foreign investments, while cyber-attacks on power grids, water supply, and communication networks have also been used alongside GPS jamming to disrupt people’s everyday lives. Allowing Ruby to dock in Klaipėda would have created a significant security risk as the cargo would be a direct physical threat to a critical infrastructure hub, making it a potential trigger for destabilization if exploited by hostile actors.

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