After an explosion in the engine room, a Russian cargo ship sinks

Two crew members  of the Ursa Major are missing and 14 have been rescued,  the Russian  Foreign Ministry said.

An explosion in the engine room  has sunk a Russian cargo ship called  the Ursa Major in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and  Algeria, and two of  the crew are missing, the Russian  Foreign Ministry said.
The ship, built in 2009, was controlled by Oboronlogistika, a company part of the Russian  Defense Ministry's military construction operations, which  earlier said it was en route to the Russian port of Vladivostok  in the Far East, with two giant cranes  moored at its  deck.
The Foreign Ministry's crisis  center said in a statement that 14 of the  ship's 16 crew members had been rescued and brought to Spain, but two crew  members were still missing. It did not say what caused the  explosion.
The Russian embassy in Spain was  quoted by  Russia's official RIA news agency as saying it was  investigating the circumstances of the sinking and was in  contact with  Spanish authorities. Oboronlogistika and SK-Yug, a company  listed by LSEG as part of the group and the direct owner and  operator of the vessel, declined to comment on the sinking. Both entities were  sanctioned by the  United States in 2022 for their ties to  the Russian military, as was the Ursa Major  itself.
Unverified video of the ship  leaning hard 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  Tuesday by the Russian news website Life.ru  .
Spain's maritime rescue service said it received a distress signal from the Ursa Major on Monday when it was about  92km off the coast of  Almeria. He said  he contacted a  nearby vessel that reported bad weather conditions, a lifeboat in the  water and said the Ursa Major  had listed to  starboard. Two ships 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  was carrying empty containers  and two port cranes on  the deck. A Russian warship later arrived  at the scene, it said, and  took over the rescue  operation.
Oboronlogistika, the ship's  last owner, said in a statement on  December 20 that the ship, which  according to LSEG  records was previously called  the Sparta III,  was carrying  specialized port cranes to be installed  in Vladivostok, as well as parts for new  icebreakers. .
Unverified video footage shows two giant cranes  attached to the  deck. Tracking data from the LSEG ship shows  that the  ship left the Russian port of  St. Petersburg on  December 11 and was last seen sending a signal at  22:04 GMT on Monday between Algeria and  Spain.
When it  left St. Petersburg, it indicated that its next port of call was the Russian port of Vladivostok,  and not the Syrian port of  Tartous, where it  had already been.
Separately, Ukraine's military intelligence service  HUR — which tracks  the movements of Russian  ships — said in a  message posted on its official Telegram channel on Monday that  another Russian cargo ship, called  the Sparta, had temporarily  encountered technical problems off the coast of  Portugal. . .
HUR said in an update that the  Sparta crew had  resolved the  issue and the ship was en route  to Syria to  pick up military equipment and ammunition  following the fall of Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.

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