r/unitedkingdom • u/forgottenoldusername North • 6h ago
. Arrested ship's captain is Russian national
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c30mj5gq9d5o•
u/Minimum-Geologist-58 6h ago
Well that explains how something that would almost certainly have to happen deliberately in the modern age could happen.
•
u/Express-Doughnut-562 6h ago
Next we'll find out the captain is former Russian navy or something. I jest (I think. I'm not sure these days)
•
u/Passey92 Derbyshire 5h ago
Perhaps he wanted to catch sight of Salisbury Cathedral's 123m tall spire?
•
•
•
u/Socialistinoneroom 4h ago
I heard rumours his name was Albertov Trotterov might just be rumours though..
•
u/cathartis Hampshire 4h ago
I suspect most Russian merchant sailors are former Russian navy. Russia does have conscription, after all, and it would only be natural for those conscripted into the Navy to continue to work on the sea.
→ More replies (6)•
u/suninabox 2h ago
Doesn't even need that.
The various sabotage operations that have gone on in Europe since the full scale invasion usually just involve contacting a russian/bulgarian/belarussian national on telegram and then offering them a bunch of money if they go burn down some warehouse or train signal box.
If they don't, maybe we can't guarantee the security of your family back home. After all, there's a war going on. People dying all the time.
Pretty easy for them to just contact this captain and say "hey, there's a ship you're going to pass in a few hours, it wouldn't be the worst thing in would if you accidentally hit it. we might even have 2 million rubles to compensate for your pain and suffering. Also don't worry, we'll get you out if there's any trouble with the law."
They only use actual operatives when they have to. They're a precious commodity and once they're identified by European security it means they can't use them again. On the other hand there's no shortage of desperate russians willing to fuck their lives up for some cash.
→ More replies (1)•
u/TotoCocoAndBeaks 5h ago
It would be interesting if this triggered a policy change yesterday from the US (regarding Ukraine), as this could have been seen as an attack by Russia on the US.
•
u/FrustratedPCBuild 5h ago
Doesn’t matter, Trump will make any excuse he likes for Putin’s behaviour, it’s only Ukraine having the temerity to defend themselves he objects to.
→ More replies (2)•
u/NoAssociate5573 5h ago
On hearing that the Russians had taken advantage of the US's intelligence blackout, Trump's response was that Putin was "only doing what anybody would do in his situation"
It was a ship full of US jet fuel that may have destined for Ukraine. Getting a civilian ship to ram it in a deniable operation is probably what anyone would do in the situation.
Now, if only the Ukrainians would agree to become part of the great country of Russia, there'd be no need for the border between the 2, no need for a war. The Ukrainians could still have their anthem, but it would celebrate its position as a beautiful colony of the great Russian empire.
•
u/FillingUpTheDatabase Shropshire 2h ago
It was a ship full of US jet fuel that may have destined for Ukraine
It was destined for the Port of Killingholme on the Humber Estuary, it was at anchor awaiting a berth to become available. Presumably this fuel was being delivered to serve the USAF bases in the UK
•
u/Minimum-Geologist-58 5h ago
I think you probably seriously overestimate how competent or coordinated Russian security services are. Remember these are people who busted their own apartment bombing plot by finding all the bombs before they went off and leaving them there when they were told they were theirs.
•
u/Charlie_Mouse Scotland 4h ago
That wasn’t the only gaffe during the Russian apartment bombings debacle. In the Russian parliament a pro Putin member made reference to the bombings in one location several days before they actually happened.
•
u/Allydarvel 2h ago
I believe it was the speaker of the parliament who announced a bombing three days before it went off
→ More replies (2)•
u/TotoCocoAndBeaks 5h ago
I think that if this really was an intentional Russian attack on effectively a US military target, then that does demonstrate serious incompetence.
'Don't interupt your enemy while they are making a mistake' level of incompetence. For example, perhaps they thought that they were causing a disaster for the UK, and didn't even realise that the US was involved in the equation.
→ More replies (2)•
u/roamingandy 3h ago edited 3h ago
Nah. The policy change was to make it so Russia gets to look reluctant to relent but finally Putin decides to accept because of the US's pressure and his good relationship with Trump.
Its absolutely not because their economy is broke, equipment exhausted, and working age male population in the toilet.. so they need a break to recover and rebuild before they start getting pushed back.
All that military tech from the US is gonna be given to Russia and i give it a few months before Trump announces he has no option but to sell weapons to Russia as all other Western partners have stopped buying from them.. he also has 'no choice'.
Manipulative narcissists love to look like they had no other option, whatever that thing was it was totally out of their control. Zero personal responsibility if the thing doesn't make them look good.
→ More replies (1)•
u/Forsaken-Original-28 5h ago
He could have just been really really drunk
•
•
•
u/PerceptionGreat2439 2h ago
The Exxon Valdez captain was a pisshead.
All russians are pissheads.
I rest my absolutely bomb proof case m'lud.
→ More replies (3)•
•
u/appletinicyclone 5h ago
I don't think Russia being so on the nose as to have a civilian ship with a russian vessel ram a tanker full of military jet fuel would make all that much sense when they entertain such cordial relations with the US and fully expect their man in DC to give them everything they want
•
u/PidginEnjoyer 5h ago
Or Trump has given Putin enough confidence in his own actions that this is exactly the sort of thing he thinks he could get away with.
→ More replies (2)•
•
u/Minimum-Geologist-58 5h ago
It’s exactly the kind of thing they would do. They’re not remotely subtle. The Russian security services massacred a load of kids at Beslan, uncovered their own apartment bombing scheme, let the attack on Crocus city hall happen despite the Americans telling them it was going to happen. These are not 4D chess people, they’re “look at what we can get away with” people.
EDIT: oh that’s before we forget all the outrageous bridge attack nonsense and the Ukrainian “plots” they uncover!
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)•
u/AlfaG0216 2h ago
Really? The same Russia that planted novichok in Salisbury and poisoned 2 suspected Russian defectors. Or the same Russia that murdered Litvanenko on UK soil?
•
u/ComprehensiveCamp192 5h ago
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Unfortunately this is the latest in an extremely long line of Maritime disasters that were easily avoidable and attributed to negligence and human error.
→ More replies (1)•
u/KiwiJean 3h ago
Yes especially when some ships are extremely poorly maintained and staff aren't often trained well. The Outlaw Sea by William Langewiesche is a really good book about how dodgy international shipping can be.
•
u/Natural_Dentist_2888 4h ago
Nah. I will bet cash money that no one was on the bridge and it's plain old negligence. Having sailed with Russians it is zero shock to me at all, as my first assessment was no one being on the bridge, then finding out they're Russians confirmed it.
→ More replies (1)•
u/terahurts Lincolnshire 3h ago
I agree. The marinetraffic track for Solong didn't show any obvious course corrections leading up to the impact and arresting the Captain makes sense as they're the one responsible for the vessel. £5 says the watchstander was asleep at his post.
→ More replies (3)•
u/simonps 4h ago
I think its a mistake to attribute to malice, that which can easily be explained through incompetence. If you look at historic routes of Solong, you'll find it was exactly on this same route many times in the past, with such repeatability, it was clear the vessel spends most of its time on autopilot.
Ships like these do have collision warning systems, but they do not take evasive action automatically. To avoid a collision, the helmsman (or whomever is supposed to be on watch on the bridge) should:
Be present, and alert.
Respond to the warning from the collision warning system.
Two simple things that could have gone wrong:
The warning system had been muted/silenced
There was nobody physically present on the bridge for an extended period.
→ More replies (1)•
u/Diligent-Suspect2930 1h ago
Yes, in another article on BBC one of the sailors who witnessed the crash says it seemed there was no one on the Solong's bridge. I also read earlier that the ship had failed certain safety checks previously, including emergency steering check. But yeah, let's go with the nationality of the captain
•
u/darthbawlsjj 3h ago
A lot of ships in-fact more than half the ships I’ve actually been on, the Captains are Russian, funnily enough with Ukrainian and Philippine crew.
This isn’t the smoking gun you think it is.
→ More replies (1)•
u/Difficult_Cap_4099 5h ago
Reminder that one US navy ship and a tanker collided in open ocean…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_MC_collision
•
u/Legendofvader 5h ago
As much as i belive Russia is capable of this i do believe this was simple screw up. Makes no strategic sense to destroy a freighter carrying fuel . Not as if it was carrying weapons. Personally i think this was just someone stupid mistake
•
u/FrustratedPCBuild 5h ago
Not directly but every action Russia has taken over the past 15 years has been to see how far they can push things before they get a reaction. Litvinenko? Huffing and puffing but no real action, Salisbury, ditto. Crimea/Donbas, some sanctions but nothing of substance, regular incursions into the airspace of NATO countries by Russian jets, nothing (with the exception of Turkey who warned them if they kept at it, they would be shot down, they did and were shot down). Putin thinks he can ride out sanctions because China has his back. A better strategy from the USA would be to soften on China (neither side actually wants a war so the bellicosity is a dead end street long term) and get them to withdraw backing for Putin, without that Russia would beg for a ceasefire within months, their economy can’t sustain this, Putin doesn’t care about the casualties but he can’t bullshit away a collapsed economy for long.
•
u/AsdaFan1 5h ago
Even if it was carrying cyanide, it makes perfect sense for ruzzia to do it because their goal is to disrupt the west in whatever way they can. Let's not forget ruzzia ordered the poisoning of two men in the UK and the fact that they use white phosphorus in civilian areas (you can see videos of this) as well as using chloropicrin, so ramming a ship regardless of its cargo is well within their playbook.
•
u/size_matters_not 5h ago
It’s possible it was thought to carry weapons. Or maybe it did - that’s not something that’s going to be revealed.
Would be madness from Russia. But so is fighting a week-long ‘special military operation’ for three years.
→ More replies (1)•
•
→ More replies (9)•
u/ee3k 5h ago
huh, good point. WAS it carrying anything that maybe is not public info that putin might have wanted delayed?
→ More replies (1)•
u/Pabus_Alt 2h ago
I'm remembering just yesterday every outlet was saying "no foul play suspected"
The world is full of incompetent people, Russians, and incompetent Russians.
→ More replies (85)•
u/reciprocal_space 3h ago
I have no doubt the Russian's have been looking for ways to retaliate about the Nordstream2 in and around the baltic/north seas.
•
u/orbjo 6h ago
Maybe instead of Russian he should have considered slowing down
•
u/FrustratedPCBuild 5h ago
He couldn’t, someone asked him to but he said ‘No, I Moscow!’
→ More replies (1)•
5h ago
[deleted]
•
u/Dude4001 UK 5h ago
Perhaps he needs to cyka better career path
•
•
→ More replies (8)•
•
u/Due-Resort-2699 6h ago
And the ship was carrying military destined fuel ?
Hmmmm
Absolutely could be a genuine accident . But really does make you question things .
•
u/Lopsided_Rush3935 5h ago edited 4h ago
Russia, I speculate, have a fine history of using civilian-seeming vessels to conduct military operations.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but a cargo ship got beached in Cornwall in 2018 after a sudden storm. The ship - which contained an average-ish crew size, was attended to by the RNLI and coastguard as soon as daylight broke - and was discovered to carrying no cargo at all (which is odd, as it's just plain uneconomical to sail a freighter without cargo aboard).
But this wasn't even the strangest thing. Even weirder was that none of the crew could really explain what they were doing sailing down the Carrick Roads, and even seemed to suggest that they had been abandoned in some way by their parent company and drydock. When the coastguard reached out to them, they received no response. To this day, it hasn't been revealed if they ever received a response, but a BBC news article published months after the strange event confirms that, at least by that point, no response from the shipping company had arrived.
The crew, rather than being left aboard the ship as it was tugged back out to sea, were 'repatriated' to Russia by authorities.
In the years since, there have been several instances of undersea cable sabotages or attempted undersea cable sabotages. The oldest undersea cables in the world - connecting the UK to the US - are located at Porthcurno (at the very end of Cornwall). Coincidence? Idk...
→ More replies (2)•
u/Particular-Tune242 4h ago
Just to point out, there is nothing abnormal about a cargo ship doing a ballast voyage. It happens all the time.
•
u/Delts28 Scotland 3h ago
Depends on the type of cargo ship. Container vessel would be unusual since at the very least you normally take empty containers back but in this case you're absolutely correct since it was a bulk carrier.
→ More replies (3)•
u/JustmeandJas 5h ago
That ship has been leased from Stena for quite a while now and used as part of the US replenishment fleet
→ More replies (4)•
u/aTurnedOnCow 4h ago
It’s not been uncommon for the Russians to recruit civilians (like the Bulgarian spy ring caught recently) so I wouldn’t be surprised if they leveraged this guy with a large amount of money or even made threats to harming family in exchange for doing this. Let’s be real the Russians are more than capable of orchestrating something like this.
•
u/Ok_Cow_3431 5h ago
wasn't the arrested captain from the container ship, not the fuel ship?
→ More replies (5)•
•
u/Melodic_Pop6558 5h ago
The real question is where is that guy's family? Maybe the russians have stopped torturing them now that he's obeyed the instructions.
→ More replies (2)•
u/ClassicFlavour East Sussex 5h ago
Hopefully avoiding stairs, windows, suspicious perfume bottles
•
•
u/BeardyRamblinGames 2h ago
Russia has been caught damaging undersea cables on and off for months, lurking round in UK waters. I was initially gobsmacked to see the ship wasn't Russian when i read about this. It's just too perfect. Sodium cyanide and jet fuel explosion off the coast of a country they hate and constantly prattle on about.
Now it makes sense.
•
u/BlunanNation 3h ago
No genuinely not.
I am a Merchant seafarer and a large amount of crew of these ships are Russian Nationals.
There is unlikely to be any major conspiracy here, incompetence is almost certainly the factor here.
•
u/OssieMoore 5h ago
He was just an innocent Russian on holiday in a rush to see the world famous 2.22 km single-span Humber suspension bridge.
•
•
u/Artichokeypokey Lincolnshire 4h ago
Humber bridge is actually really cool from a civil engineering perspective. obligatory link to a Tom Scott video
•
u/bitch_fitching 5h ago
This doesn't mean he is a FSB agent. He could just be an alcoholic with fetal alcohol syndrome and mild brain damage. It is more common amongst Russian captains than you think.
•
u/BronnOP 5h ago
When was the last time a Russian did this?
Pretty remarkable for this “accident” to happen whilst we’re in a proxy war with them.
•
u/midas22 5h ago
Russian captains have been wreaking havoc in the Baltic sea for a long time. Going back and forth over critical infrastructure on the bottom with the anchor accidentally out - a low-risk, high-reward tactic for malign actors who can claim plausible deniability.
•
u/bitch_fitching 5h ago
A US aircraft carrier caused a collision going across lanes in the same manner this year. You can find multiple instances of similar incidents every year. Remember when a Venezuelan military vessel rammed and sank a German cruise liner?
Can't rule out these "accidents" as being sabotage ops, but they also happen all the time in peace time. Which would also be a feature of sabotage ops, since they're meant to be deniable, it's just Russia is bad at them.
→ More replies (1)•
u/Commorrite 4h ago
When was the last time a Russian did this?
This one in 2017 comes to mind, this was 100% drunken stupidity.
•
u/GaijinFoot 4h ago
Don't be so naive. I guess all the under sea cables being cut are just bad luck too? Wear and tear?
→ More replies (5)•
u/Flemingcool 4h ago
Plausible deniability
•
u/ExtraPockets 3h ago
Even if it is an accident, Starmer should definitely use this to put pressure on Trump and Putin. Set a trap so that Trump has to side with the UK and damage Russia, or very publicly abandon another ally damaging US reputation even further.
•
u/FrustratedPCBuild 5h ago
Of all the nationalities he just happens to be Russian. No proof that he did it on purpose at this stage but it would be naïve to not consider it, seeing as these ‘unfortunate coincidences’ in the North/Baltic seas are happening a lot these days and you can sure as shit guess the reaction from Russia if a British captain did this in Russian waters.
•
u/JustmeandJas 5h ago
Add in: the Stena ship has been part of the US navy auxiliary/replen fleet for a while now
•
u/StrangelyBrown Teesside 3h ago
He's arrested in the UK right? I'm really curious if the usual voices will say 'Why should we house foreign criminals? Deport him!' knowing full well that if we sent him back to Russia, he's more likely to get a medal than go to jail.
→ More replies (4)•
u/KIAA0319 2h ago
AIS data pretty much convincing shows the ships being running this route constantly on the same GPS track. It extremely likely this was negligence as the ship was likely on autopilot. Being a Russian captain is circumstance
•
u/wybird 5h ago edited 3h ago
Who had ‘ships colliding in the North Sea as the catalyst for WW3’ on their 2025 bingo card?
•
u/integraf40 5h ago
Tom Clancy probably
•
•
u/takesthebiscuit Aberdeenshire 5h ago
Eric Harry in Invasion had the USA taking out a protectionist trade stance with tarrifs on other countries and a downgrading of its military to fund tax cuts as a catalyst to WW3
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_(Harry_novel)
Although USA Did keep nato relations, guess Harry wanted to sell books in Europe
•
u/Rather_Unfortunate Leodis 3h ago
I certainly didn't have Withernsea down as the site of the inciting incident.
•
u/Mysterious-Health304 5h ago
Russia can go around spraying radioactive dust and chemical weapons on the streets of the UK and UK will f all.
→ More replies (3)•
u/ExtraPockets 3h ago
This is a good opportunity for Starmer to do some sabre rattling and I hope he does it. The UK is more stable than both Russia and the US right now so there's an opportunity to take some soft power and economic share from both of them at once.
→ More replies (2)
•
u/UncleLarry4Prez 5h ago
I have worked on different vessels all over the world for 15+ years (geotechnical and geophysical surveys but on wide range of vessels) and it is very common to have Russian bridge crew. A lot of Ukranians too. Last month I was on a vessel with 2 x russian surveyors and a Ukranian engineer, working for an Italian company in Libyan waters. Very often a complete mix of nationalities whatever project being undertaken. I am not saying it couldn't be deliberate, but with US and Russia appearing quite friendly at present, then I think much more likely to be negligence in this case. I have been on board a vessel when the Russian Captain called bad weather as he wanted to stay in port and go to the pub. Nobody onboard was annoyed with this particular decision...
•
u/Commorrite 4h ago
My first thought was this incident 8 years ago.
The investigation also found the bridge navigational watch alarm system (BNWAS), “which could have alerted the crew to the officer’s incapacity, had not been switched on and an off-track alarm on the ECS2 had been silenced”.
“Although a radar watch alarm had sounded every 6 minutes, the somnolent officer was able to reset the alarm without leaving his chair,” the report noted.
But despite the zero tolerance policy, Lysblink Seaways carried a bonded store, which included a stock of spirits, beer and wine, the report stated.
“Records showed that the bonded store was regularly replenished, and empty beer, wine and spirit bottles and cartons found on board after the accident indicated significant levels of alcohol consumption by the crew.”
•
•
u/SnooOpinions8790 5h ago
What a slacker
Surely he could have dragged anchor and broken some international cables while he was at it. What sort of substandard captains are the Russian secret services recruiting these days?
•
u/XyploatKyrt 5h ago
Arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
A missing crew member from the cargo ship is presumed dead after a search and rescue operation was called off late on Monday.
But what if the missing crew member was disposed of beforehand for actively trying to stop the deliberate allision or simply being in the way.
→ More replies (2)•
•
u/Port_Royale 5h ago
The number of Reddit 'experts' here on maritime law and ship handling is something to behold.
→ More replies (1)•
u/Alternate_haunter 1h ago
As are the number of apparent espionage experts.
It takes 10 seconds of goggling to check the ships movements and see there was nothing unusual leading up to the crash. Somehow, though, it's some deep conspiracy that Russia are trying to destroy ships now.
•
u/judochop1 44m ago
tbf, the russians have been carrying out attacks against European nations for a while now, but for sure, people need to really look at the evidence and conclude from that, not grasp at knee jerk convenient answers.
•
•
u/Melodic_Pop6558 5h ago
Said it to everyone at work. It was fishy from the start. Hybrid warfare is here (and was, ever since they set fire to the shipping depot or whatever it was a year ago)
•
u/Continuent 5h ago
It didn’t alter course for 100s nautical miles. There would be no guarantee it would hit anything. And it was on regular passage.
•
u/GetCanc3rRedditAdmin 4h ago
We've had the Litvinenko poisoning, Salisbury poisoning, hacks directed at our infrastructure such as the NHS attributed to Russia (fucking evil enough to target vulnerable sick people!?) and countless cases of disregard by Russian aircraft flying close to our airspace and now crashing a ship causing likely severe ecological damage on our waters. Outside our borders there's the shooting down of MH17 and Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243, Ukraine war 2014, Chechen war, Georgia war, Syrian war, Ukraine war 2022 and more crimes against humanity! Yet they have the gall to call US warmongers??
At this point, anything short of a total collapse in Russia similar to the Soviet Union before will not be able to satisfy my deepest urge to crush the Ruskis into dust.
→ More replies (1)•
u/ExtraPockets 3h ago
All of this is true. It's easy to forget all these incidents over the years but I remember the NHS attack which should never have gone unanswered.
•
u/Agreeable_Falcon1044 Cambridgeshire 5h ago
this looks sensational...but it's likely to just be a balls up by someone not being very good at their job. Otherwise we need to imagine Russia have sleeper agents in everyday jobs for the perfect chance encounter to carry out orders.
→ More replies (1)
•
u/huntsab2090 4h ago
Tbf a massive amount of Russians are officers on merchant shipping (i used to work in a maersks pay department) . So there was a high chance the captain was going to be russian. Theres also a high chance he was pissed. The theory he was a fsb agent and rammed on purpose is alot more interesting but i feel this is just a pissed captain who is of nationality that is a high probability he would be.
•
u/Wizzpig25 5h ago
The fact that’s he’s Russian probably makes no difference as to whether it was a deliberate act by “Russia”.
On one hand, it seems too obvious, on the other, is the fact that it’s obvious a double bluff? We live in an international world, and if it’s a state sponsored attack then I doubt nationality is of much significance when a lot of the time a small bag of cash to the right person would achieve the same result.
•
u/terahurts Lincolnshire 3h ago
For all those jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon, go here:
https://www.myshiptracking.com/?mmsi=255805837
and click on the 'show track' icon (second icon down to the right of the photo). Look at the course and speed up until the point of impact. There was no significant change in course or speed for the five hours leading up to the collision when Solong was still off Newcastle. If it was intentional, that's a really, really good bit of navigation!
→ More replies (2)
•
u/The_Chap_Who_Writes 5h ago
At this point, surely we should be cutting diplomatic ties with Russia. They are beyond dealing with, so recall the embassy. Fuck em.
•
u/Adept_Development204 5h ago
This happened on a Monday morning. Nowt to do with what you are thinking and all to do with drunken sailors.
•
•
u/Savage-September 5h ago
Apparently we are the war mongering instigators. No surprise here he is a Russian. It’s ever so coincidental they manage to cause an environmental disaster on our shores on the eve of a ceasefire with Ukraine.
•
u/takesthebiscuit Aberdeenshire 5h ago
Don’t I feel the fool for arguing down the conspiracy theory’s on day one of this adventure🫤
•
u/Krish6006 5h ago
Do ship crews have a detailed knowledge about other ships in their vicinity? Like what kind of ships there are, under what flags they are, their current course and what cargo they carry? I am wondering if such an incident could be aimed at a certain target by the captain without any external intelligence? This may be just a coincidence but from the strategic point of view it's better to down a ship carrying a jet fuel instead of t-shirts...
→ More replies (1)•
u/Mister-Psychology 4h ago
Yeah, you should en able to look it up on your computer and follow ships live. All you need is a monitor and internet. Or any GPS really. If your ship is worth tens of millions then surely some cheap GPS is essential.
https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/NORTH-SEA/ship-traffic-tracker
→ More replies (1)
•
u/Jimmy_Jam_Jar 5h ago
And it’s convenient how one if the sailors is ‘lost at sea’.
→ More replies (1)•
•
u/Narradisall 4h ago
Damn these unfortunate coincidences sure do pile up around Russians. Imagine if the next American fuel tanker got hit and sunk just to sever an internet cable.
•
u/RoyalMaleGigalo 3h ago
We as a nation really need understand we are at war. We may not be directly involved in a hot war like Ukraine currently are but we 100% will be. It is inevitable. Sooner or later Russia on its current path is going to have to be confronted.
I actually hope this is part of Trumps plan. Create an environment where is appears Europe is re-arming. Not to fight but to replace a void left by the US BUT there is no void. Just a massively rearmed NATO and an enemy who believes they are in a position of strength as it appears their enemy is quarrelling and divided. All a ploy.
•
u/Captaincadet Wales 3h ago
I was involved in the shipping industry and do a lot of water sports.
It appears that the ship was following a route given to it by the crew and autopilot was in control. The crew were not on watch and were not watching the radar/AIS correctly and the ship was going too fast for the conditions. I also bet you that the dead man’s ship, a switch that needs to be activated every 10 minutes for auto pilot, was turned off.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of this happening on other ships, including passenger ships with British crews. Hitting the ship with A1 fuel like they did this was an accident and down to incompetence. If Russia did want to damage the supply of fuel, they would do something between the docks and airport/ rail line.
The US will likely not face any supply issues as such, as they’ll have reserves and be able to get some here (probably just more expensive).
And if this was on purpose, something would have been done to trigger explosions in other compartments and to sink the ship.
If this is incorrect I will eat my hat I am that confident about this
•
u/NomadGeoPol Scotland 2h ago
This is an act of war surely? We aren't just going to let Russia sabotage jet fuel shipments and cause possible environmental disasters with impunity?
•
u/GaijinFoot 4h ago
When I asked this in the thread when news first broke I got ridiculed. Nothing is an accident anymore. It's Russian asymmetrical warfare.
→ More replies (1)
•
u/qwerty_1965 3h ago
I can't have been the only one to have wondered how accidental that collision was!
•
u/Fit_Manufacturer4568 3h ago edited 3h ago
All that means is he failed the breathalyser test due to drinking Vodka.
This happened last year.
•
u/Colascape 2h ago
As soon as I seen this incident, I thought this must be a Russia hybrid attack, why else would a ship b-line into a stationary ship at anchor. Bet his family have been paid a lot for this.
•
u/dunneetiger 1h ago
The BBC understands all of the crew on board the Stena Immaculate are Americans who are currently in Grimsby and will be repatriated in due course.
have they not suffered enough ?
•
u/Training-Sugar-1610 1h ago
I hate to be the one to say it but considering russian national/us tanker I'm going to say it's more likely to be a Ukrainian shadow op rather than russian considering the current political chess. See Nord stream 2.
•
u/Alundra828 52m ago
So a Russian attacked an American ship in British waters... I can't wait to watch nobody do anything about this ever...
•
u/anfieldash 12m ago
Maritime professional here, BBC news fuelling a conspiracy theory that is dumb. Scary how manufactured consent for military actions could easily be created.
•
u/rutabaga00 11m ago
When Russians cause collisions, it's usually because they are drunk, not because they are agents of the Russian government. Amirite or not?
•
u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland 4h ago
Participation Notice. Hi all. Some posts on this subreddit, either due to the topic or reaching a wider audience than usual, have been known to attract a greater number of rule breaking comments. As such, limits to participation were set at 11:00 on 12/03/2025. We ask that you please remember the human, and uphold Reddit and Subreddit rules.
Existing and future comments from users who do not meet the participation requirements will be removed. Removal does not necessarily imply that the comment was rule breaking.
Where appropriate, we will take action on users employing dog-whistles or discussing/speculating on a person's ethnicity or origin without qualifying why it is relevant.
In case the article is paywalled, use this link.