The Russian struggle to leave Tartous by sea

On 8th December 2024, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad fell. The new power doesn't wish to leave the Tartous base to Russia. It had to be evacuated in record time. A race that ended in a shipwreck.

Off the coast of Spain and Algeria, on 24th December 2024, the ship Ursa Major was shipwrecked. The cargo ship was part of the Russian fleet tasked with transporting equipment from the Syrian base at Tartous. This armada was composed of private cargo ships Baltic Leader, Siyanie Severa, Ascalon, Lady D and Bering and the usual squadron of the Syrian Express: Ursa Major, Sparta and Sparta IV with military logistical support ships Ivan Gren, Aleksandr Shabalin and Otralovskiy. This was complicated because a few days before the Ursa Major, it was the Sparta that was in trouble. And all the incidents have certainly not been communicated by Russia.

Base to abandon

It was a matter of evacuating military and civil equipment from their base in the Mediterranean, which had to be emptied on the orders of the new Syrian power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Notably, there were state-of-the-art S400 surface-to-air batteries. These ship convoys moved everything between Syria and (officially) Russian ports in the Baltic Sea or Vladivostok, sometimes even apparently passing through Benghazi in Libya. Indeed, location beacons were turned off several times in the Mediterranean. The 4th and final rotation departed at the end of March. The journey is supposed to last 3 weeks. There was also an airlift from the Hmeimim airbase, which was also forced to close.

(MH with Olivier Duquesne – Source: RFI – Picture: © picture alliance/dpa/MAXPPP | Adrien Vautier / Le Pictorium)