A Russian cargo vessel that sank in mysterious circumstances off the coast of Spain in late December 2024 was carrying components for two submarine nuclear reactors intended for North Korea, Spanish investigators have determined, according to reporting published this week by CNN and the regional newspaper La Verdad. The findings, made public on Wednesday, mark the most detailed account yet of the doomed voyage of the Ursa Major.
The Ursa Major went down on 23 December 2024 approximately 60 miles off the Spanish coast, settling in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of around 2,500 meters between Spain and Algeria. The ship sank after a series of unexplained explosions, while its official manifest described the cargo as cranes and empty containers travelling from St Petersburg to Vladivostok.
According to the Russian captain's later testimony to Spanish investigators, the items declared as non-dangerous merchandise, listed on paperwork as two large hatch covers, were in fact components for nuclear reactors similar to those used in attack submarines. The captain told authorities he believed the vessel would eventually be diverted to the North Korean port of Rason for delivery before declining further discussion citing safety concerns.
Spanish investigators now suspect that a Western military deliberately sank the Ursa Major using a rare supercavitating torpedo, a high-speed underwater weapon, to prevent Moscow from transferring sensitive nuclear submarine technology to Pyongyang. The hypothesis would mark one of the most consequential covert maritime operations of the post-Cold War era.
The reported delivery would have coincided with the deployment of roughly 10,000 North Korean soldiers supporting Russia's war in Ukraine, suggesting that the transfer of advanced reactor technology may have served as compensation. Western intelligence agencies have long warned that closer Russian-North Korean military cooperation could accelerate Pyongyang's submarine programme.
The Russian intelligence-gathering vessel Yantar spent five days hovering over the wreck one week after the incident, and US nuclear sniffer aircraft have flown over the site twice in the past year, according to publicly available flight tracking data. Spanish authorities have concluded that recovering the ship's data recorder is impossible without enormous cost and risk.
Neither the Russian government nor North Korean officials have commented publicly on the new findings. Analysts in Madrid and Brussels say the case has alarmed NATO capitals and may prompt fresh debate within the alliance over how to monitor and disrupt sanctioned weapons transfers at sea.
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