Ekaterina Girnyk16:18, 25.12.24

Ursa Major was the largest and most powerful vessel in the Kremlin’s logistics fleet.

On Christmas Eve, the Ursa Major , a cargo ship operated by the Kremlin’s military logistics company, sank in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain .  

The loss of the “unique and difficult-to-replace” 13,000-ton bulk carrier was a major blow to Oboronlogistics and the Russian shipbuilding industry, writes Forbes analyst David Ax.

Aks clarifies that the German-built Ursa Major was only 15 years old, which is very young for a support vessel. Russia’s Crisis Management Center noted that the vessel suffered an “explosion” in the engine room, after which it capsized on its starboard side and sank. 

“Ursa Major was a special object. It was the largest ship of Oboronlogistics, and also one of the few ships in the company’s registry equipped with ramps for driving cars in and out of the hold, as well as cranes for vertical loading mounted on top,” notes Aks.

At the same time, Russian bloggers note that a larger universal cargo vessel with the ability to load horizontally and vertically simply does not exist in the Russian Federation.

As Aks notes, according to available data, Ursa Major was transporting cranes and special hatches for nuclear icebreakers to Vladivostok, and it was the bulky cranes that could have led to the ship being overloaded and sinking.

Ursa Major’s mission in the Far East was to carry out the tasks of “developing port infrastructure and the Northern Sea Route,” which have now apparently been thwarted, the article says.

Ursa Major – what is known about the incident

The Russian cargo ship Ursa Major sank in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain . According to the Spanish publication, 14 sailors were taken to the port of Cartagena. Two more are missing. Sources claim that an explosion occurred on the ship, which caused it to list.

According to the spokesman of the Ukrainian Navy, Dmitry Pletenchuk, the accident occurred due to systemic problems with the maintenance of ships. According to him, this event indicates that the Russian occupiers are beginning to feel the consequences of Western sanctions.

(C)UNIAN 2024