Russian cargo ship sinks in Mediterranean after explosion in engine room | Russia

An engine room explosion sank a Russian cargo ship called the Ursa Major in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria, and two of its crew are missing, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The vessel, built in 2009, was controlled by Oboronlogistika, a company part of the Russian Defense Ministry’s military construction operations, which had previously said it was bound for the Russian Far Eastern port of Vladivostok with two giant harbor cranes lashed to its deck .

The State Department crisis center said in a statement that 14 of the ship’s 16 crew members had been rescued and brought to Spain, but that two crew members were still missing. It did not say what had caused the explosion.

Russia’s embassy in Spain was quoted by Russian state news agency RIA as saying it was investigating the circumstances of the sinking and was in contact with authorities in Spain.

Oboronlogistika and SK-Yug, a company LSEG lists as part of the group and the ship’s direct owner and operator, declined to comment on the sinking. Both units were placed under sanctions by the United States in 2022 for their ties to Russia’s military, as was Ursa Major itself.

Unconfirmed video footage of the ship, lying heavily on its starboard side with its bow much lower in the water than usual, was filmed on December 23 by a passing ship and published on Russian news outlet Life.ru on Tuesday.

Spain’s maritime rescue service said it received a distress signal from Ursa Major on Monday when it was located about 57 miles off the coast of Almería. It said it had contacted a nearby ship which reported bad weather conditions, a lifeboat in the water and said the Ursa Major was heading to starboard.

Two vessels and a helicopter were dispatched to the scene and the 14 surviving crew members were taken to the Spanish port of Cartagena. The maritime rescue service quoted the crew as saying that the ship had been carrying empty containers as well as the two harbor cranes on deck. A Russian warship had later arrived at the scene, it said, and took charge of rescue operations.

Oboronlogistika, the ship’s ultimate owner, said in a Dec. 20 statement that the ship, which LSEG data showed was previously named Sparta III, had been carrying specialized harbor cranes to be installed in Vladivostok, as well as parts for new icebreakers.

Two giant cranes could be seen strapped to the deck in the unconfirmed video footage. LSEG ship tracking data shows that the vessel departed from the Russian port of St. Petersburg on December 11 and was last seen sending a signal at 2204 GMT Monday between Algeria and Spain.

When it left St. Petersburg, it had indicated that its next port of call was the Russian port of Vladivostok, not the Syrian port of Tartous, which it has previously called at.

Separately, Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service – which tracks Russian ship movements – said in a post on its official Telegram channel on Monday that another Russian cargo ship, called the Sparta, had temporarily run into technical problems off the coast of Portugal.

HUR said in an update that Sparta’s crew had resolved the issue and that the ship was heading to Syria to collect military equipment and ammunition following the fall of close Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.

Reuters could not confirm HUR’s claims about Sparta’s destination or mission.