The only certainties surrounding the last hours of the Russian cargo ship Ursa Major concern the sinking in the Mediterranean Sea, between Spain and Algeria, and the fate of the 16 crew members, with 14 rescued and transferred to Spain, with 2 missing. For the rest, many doubts, different interpretations and inevitable suspicions remain. Regarding the cause, the Russians report an explosion in the engine room, without providing further details. The issue that causes the most discussion, however, is the ship's route. What was the Russian cargo ship doing off the coast of the Spanish Águilas and the Algerian Orano? According to the Russians, it left St. Petersburg on December 11th and should have arrived on January 22nd in Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East overlooking the Pacific, where it would have unloaded civilian material. According to the Ukrainians, however, it is one of the ships used by the Kremlin to recover weapons in Syria after the retreat following the dissolution of the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad; previous intelligence reports have linked the ship to this type of mission, but there is currently no independent confirmation of this version.
Let's start with the news. The last signal detected by the British company Lseg dates back to 11.04pm on Monday. Probably the moment when an explosion capsized the Ursa Major in international waters, endangering the lives of its crew members, all Russian citizens. Fourteen were recovered and transported to the port of Cartagena, while there is no further news of two others. Several ships participated in the rescue operations, writes El Espanol, to which were added the Maritime Rescue specialists, the ship Clara Campoamore and the Navy patrol boat Serviola. The moment in which the cargo vessel tilts onto its starboard side, with the bow much lower than it should have been, was captured on video by another ship that casually passed by.
It is not yet entirely clear what the mission entrusted to the cargo ship was.
The Russian thesis. From the note published by Oboronlogistics last December 20, Ursa Major was transporting specialized cranes and other spare components for icebreaking machines, to be installed in the port of Vladivostok. It was therefore a “state mission” to pursue the Kremlin's plans. Russia has seen the Northern Seas as the best alternative to the Suez Canal for years, even more so since China became its largest trading partner due to Western sanctions. Already in 2019, when it still bore the name Sparta III, it had successfully crossed it. The new Arctic route, which many are looking at with interest as it has become more navigable due to the melting of the ice, would gain ten days of time to reach Chinese ports: an advantage that is anything but trivial.
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The Ukrainian thesis. It is the military intelligence of Kiev (Hur) that speaks of another ship, a Sparta, which had technical problems that led it to drift off the coast of Portugal, not far from where the accident of the Ursa Major. It is not yet clear whether it is the same cargo ship, but according to the Ukrainians it was headed to Syria to recover vehicles and men after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. What is certain, according to Kiev, is that the Ursa Major was part of the fleet of Russian ghost ships used for this type of mission. Moscow has represented the lifesaver of the Syrian regime for almost a decade, but the rapid offensive of the rebels forced the dictator to hide in some unknown place in Russia, while the latter had to retreat to its two main Syrian military bases: the air base of Khmeimin and, even more importantly, the port of Tartus from where the frigate Admiral Grygorovych and the cargo ship Inzhenier Trubin would have been taken away.
It would not be the first time that a Russian cargo ship sailed in that area. The Sparta II cargo ship, for example, set sail from Tartus in April 2022 to dock in Novorossiysk, with military equipment and probably army men on board – Oboronlogistics was created precisely to move vehicles, goods and soldiers on government orders Russian. After the invasion of Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had imposed a ban on military ships from navigating the Bosphorus, allowing only civilian ones to pass. Although Sparta II falls into this category, the cargo it carried should have equated it to a warship. And therefore be banished from those waters.
