Special sea transport ship sinks, leaving Russian shipyard in ‘chaos’

A unique and difficult-to-replace shipping vessel operated by the Kremlin’s military logistics company sank in the Mediterranean Sea near Spain on Christmas Eve. The loss of the 13,000-ton M/V Ursa Major is a huge blow to Oboronlogistika and Russia’s battered shipbuilding industry.

The German-built Ursula was just 15 years old, young for an auxiliary vessel, when it suffered what the Russian Emergency Management Center described as an “explosion” in its engine room. The ship was seen listing to starboard before finally sinking. A nearby ship rescued all but two of the 16 crew members.

Ursa Major was a special asset. The vessel is Ovolon Logistica’s largest vessel and is a company-registered ship equipped with a roll-on/roll-off ramp for vehicles for direct entry into and exit from the hold, as well as a top-mounted crane for vertical loading. It was also one of the few ships in existence. In a letter translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated, one Russian blogger lamented that “larger general-purpose RO/RO-LO/LO class cargo ships (capable of horizontal and vertical loading) do not exist.” .

Ursa Major once supported Russia’s garrison in Syria, but now that war-torn country has a new government in place, that garrison is in jeopardy. However, she was reportedly on another mission when she sank. The RO/RO ship left St. Petersburg in mid-December and headed for Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast. The ship passed through the English Channel on December 16, along with the Russian auxiliary ship Sparta and the Russian naval corvette RFS Soubrajtelny.

A Type 23 frigate of the Royal Navy pursued the Russians along the route. A Lockheed Martin P-3 patrol aircraft from the Portuguese Air Force then checked in.

Two heavy cranes were visible on the deck of the Ursa Major at the time. These cranes and special hatches for nuclear-powered icebreakers will reportedly allow Ursa Major to travel south through the Mediterranean Sea, taking a southbound route to Vladivostok rather than the Northern Sea Route to avoid winter ice, before entering the Suez Canal. It is said that this was the main cargo when sailing towards the destination. The cumbersome crane may have made Ursa Major top-heavy and contributed to her loss.

“Along with the ship, the crane bound for the Vladivostok terminal and the luxurious hatches for the icebreaker also fell to the bottom,” the blogger lamented. “Ursa Major’s mission in the Far East was to achieve national objectives related to ‘port infrastructure and the development of the Northern Sea Route,’ but it is now clearly in disarray.”