Ports throughout Europe have turned away a badly-damaged cargo ship because of its potentially explosive cargo: a mountain of Russian fertilizer that one foreign ambassador called a “floating megabomb.”
But it’s not just the MV Ruby’s load of 20,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate that’s giving port officials pause — even though a far smaller load of the same fertilizer component devastated the Port of Beirut in 2020 when it blew, according to the New York Times.
It’s that the 600-foot vessel — which is registered in Malta and owned by Ruby Enterprise, a Maltese company — is limping along the northern European coastline laden with Russian fertilizer from a Russian port.
That makes some worry that it could be a Trojan horse meant to sabotage some unsuspecting European port.
“When we are dealing with Russia or other international actors that are unfriendly to us, we always keep this possibility in mind,” Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said after the country’s prime minister told Parliament the ship wouldn’t be allowed to dock there.
Similar sentiments among European leaders have left the ship in limbo, floating off the coast of southeastern England for the last week with a cracked hull and damaged propeller as its managers in the United Arab Emirates try to assuage the public that the ship is no threat to them, the Times said.
But they’re not getting far.
The Ruby’s voyage was almost doomed from the start.
It left the Russian port of Kandalaksha, on the country’s northwestern coast, back in August. But it ran aground soon after, and the wounds it sustained quickly stopped it from continuing to its destination ports in Africa, the Times said.
For weeks after, the ship sailed around the European coast, searching in vain for a friendly port that would allow it to repair and refurbish its shattered infrastructure.
It headed to Norway, where port officials detained it outside the city of Tromso on Sept. 1 so inspectors could examine the damage, according to the Norwegian Maritime Authority.
“There were damages to the rudder, propeller and some cracks in the hull,” a spokesman for the authority told the Times in an email. “As far as we know, the damages have not affected the cargo on board.”
It was gone three days later.
Other countries have refused to even let it approach because they fear the unstable cargo could explode — similar to the Beirut disaster, when a 2,750-pound load of the same chemical detonated in a shocking explosion that claimed 190 lives and caused more than $15 billion in property damage.
The Ruby is carrying nearly eight times more.
So it headed to Lithuania. But the little Baltic nation — which has a history of hostilities with its larger neighbor, who once occupied it under the Soviet Union’s harsh banner — also turned it away, the Times said.
There was no evidence of malicious intent, said Landsbergis, the prime minister.
But it could not take the risk.
Even Malta turned it away, despite the fact that the Ruby flies a Maltese banner. Officials said the Ruby could only dock if it rid itself of its potentially dangerous cargo, the Times said.
So the ship headed for Britain — just as the former Lithuanian ambassador to Britain, Eitvydas Bajarunas, called it a “floating megabomb” and warned of Russian sabotage in an ill-timed column published by a European policy think tank.
And that was that.
“Unfortunately, due to the media speculation that has surrounded this vessel, port terminals in the U.K. are reticent to take the vessel in,” the ship’s manager said last week in a statement, according to the Times.
Instead, the Ruby asked to dock so it could transfer the ammonium nitrate to another boat, then perform repairs.
British authorities haven’t answered yet, the outlet said.
So the ship remains off the coast, mired in the political muck as it refuels at sea and waits for its ocean-borne purgatory to end.
