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A Russian cargo ship operated by the Defense Ministry’s logistics fleet sank on Tuesday in international waters between Spain and Algeria while en route from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
The ship, the Ursa Major, sank due to an engine room explosion. The Russian Foreign Ministry said two crew members were still missing and 14 others had been rescued and taken to the Spanish port of Cartagena.
At 142 meters long, about the size of a football field and a half, the Ursa Major is the largest ship operated by Oboronlogisticika, the Russian military’s logistics arm, with a cargo capacity of up to 1,200 tons.
The Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) said the ship had previously been transporting cargo between Russia and Iran in the Caspian Sea and was later reassigned to a route connecting Syria.
According to information on the Oboronlogisticika website, the ship was transporting cranes and icebreaker equipment to Vladivostok as part of the “national mission” to develop the Northern Sea Route.
In recent years, Moscow has promoted the Northern Sea Route as a faster alternative to the Suez Canal to China, Russia’s largest trading partner, on which it has increasingly relied in the face of Western sanctions.
The route is entirely within Arctic waters but becomes more navigable in the summer due to climate warming.
The standard voyage from the northern Russian port of Primorsk to China via the Suez Canal takes 45 days, while the Northern Sea Route shortens this time to 35 days.
