Mines on LPG Tanker Point to Dangerous New Front in Baltic War

By Paul Morgan (gCaptain) – Russia’s Federal Security Service announced on Monday that divers had discovered magnetic explosive devices attached to the hull of a Liberia-flagged liquefied petroleum gas tanker in the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, in what the Kremlin has described as a thwarted terrorist attack. 

The incident, which Russian authorities have attributed to a NATO country without naming one, raises serious questions about the vulnerability of energy shipping to sub-surface sabotage and the potential for further escalation in an already volatile theatre.

The tanker in question, the Arrhenius, arrived at Ust-Luga from the Belgian port of Antwerp. Russia’s