Forbes: Losing Ursa Major Cargo Ship Was Serious Blow For Russia

• 25.12.2024, 18:46

The ship was used to evacuate Russian troops from Syria.

On Christmas Eve, the Ursa Major cargo ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea near Spain, which was used to evacuate Russian troops from Syria. According to a target="_blank" href=https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/12/24/russian-shipbuilding-evidently-disrupted-as-unique-sealift-ship-sinks/>Forbes analyst David Axe, the loss of the “unique and difficult to replace” 13,000-ton cargo ship was a serious blow to Oboronlogistics and the Russian shipbuilding industry.

Ax clarifies that the Ursa Major, built in Germany, was only 15 years old, which is very young for an auxiliary vessel. The Russian Crisis Management Center noted that an “explosion” occurred in the engine room, after which the ship capsized on its starboard side and sank.

“The Ursa Major was a special object. This was the largest ship of Oboronlogistics, and also one of the few vessels in the company's registry equipped with ramps for driving cars in and out of the hold, as well as cranes for vertical loading installed on top,” Axe notes.

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

As Axe 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 fulfill the tasks of “developing port infrastructure and the Northern Sea Route,” which have now obviously been disrupted, the article says.