According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, an engine room explosion has sunk a Russian cargo ship named Ursa Major in the Mediterranean between Spain and Algeria and two of its crew are missing.

The ship, built in 2009, was controlled by Oboronlogistika, a company that is part of the Russian Defense Ministry’s military construction operations. The ship had previously said it was en route to the Russian Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, where two huge harbor cranes were lashed to its deck.

The State Department crisis center said in a statement that 14 of the ship’s 16 crew members had been rescued and taken to Spain, but two crew members were still missing. It was not said what caused the explosion.

Russian state news agency RIA quoted the Russian embassy in Spain as saying it was investigating the circumstances of the sinking and was in contact with authorities in Spain.

Oboronlogistika and SK-Yug, a company that lists LSEG as part of the group and is the direct owner and operator of the ship, declined to comment on the sinking. Both units were sanctioned by the US in 2022 for their ties to the Russian military, as was the Ursa Major itself.

On December 23, unconfirmed video footage showing the ship tilting sharply to starboard and its bow much lower in the water than usual was captured by a passing ship and published on Tuesday by the Russian news agency Life.ru became.

Spain’s maritime rescue service said it received a distress signal from the Ursa Major on Monday while it was about 57 miles off the coast of Almería. It said it made contact with a nearby ship that reported poor weather conditions and a lifeboat in the water, and said the Ursa Major was on the starboard side.

Two ships and a helicopter were sent to the scene and the 14 surviving crew members were taken to the Spanish port of Cartagena. The sea rescue service quoted the crew as saying that in addition to the two harbor cranes on deck, the ship also carried empty containers. A Russian warship later arrived on site and took over the rescue operation, it was said.

Oboronlogistika, the ship’s ultimate owner, said in a Dec. 20 statement that the ship, formerly named Sparta III according to LSEG data, was carrying special port cranes to be installed in Vladivostok, as well as parts for new icebreakers.

The unconfirmed video footage showed two huge cranes strapped to the deck. LSEG ship tracking data shows the ship left the Russian port of St. Petersburg on December 11 and was last seen sending a signal between Algeria and Spain at 2204 GMT on Monday.

Upon leaving St. Petersburg, it had indicated that its next port of call was the Russian port of Vladivostok, rather than the Syrian port of Tartus, which it had previously called at.

Separately, Ukrainian military intelligence agency HUR – which tracks Russian shipping movements – said in a post on its official Telegram channel on Monday that another Russian cargo ship named Sparta had temporarily encountered technical problems off the coast of Portugal.

HUR said in an update that the Sparta’s crew had fixed the problem and that the ship was en route to Syria to collect military equipment and ammunition following the fall of close Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.

Reuters was unable to verify HUR’s claims about Sparta’s destination or mission.