Did a Western torpedo stop a nuclear transfer to North Korea?
In 2024, just a couple of days before Christmas, the Russian ship MV Ursa Major sank about 60 miles off the coast of Spain. While the loss was noteworthy, the world moved on pretty quickly. However, the downed ship is back in the news today in large part because CNN released new details on the incident; details which point to the nuclear nature of the ship’s true cargo and a Western plot to ensure that it never reached its final destination.
The Ursa Major was owned by the state-linked Oboronlogistics company and was part of Russia’s “Ghost Fleet”—a group of ships used to evade sanctions and transport illicit or secret cargo. On this particular occasion, the ship’s stated destination was the Far East, where it claimed to carry “significant project cargo as part of state tasks aimed at developing port infrastructure and the Northern Sea Route.”
Ukraine believed it was on its way to retrieve Russian military equipment for Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell a few weeks before. However, its captain would later state that their final destination was intended to be North Korea, and that revelation was far more concerning.
A nuclear favor
You see, just two months before the Ursa Major made its way to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, North Korea sent roughly 10,000 soldiers to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even at the time, it seemed like a strange move. North Korea and Russia had become closer allies as the war dragged on, but sending its own citizens to die marked a dramatic shift from simply supplying weapons and munitions.
Granted, Kim Jong-un shows so little regard for the lives of his people that he very well could have considered 10,000 soldiers to be an easier price to pay than continuing to empty out his military stores. However, it was widely believed that the return he would receive from Russia would reflect that escalation.
While North Korea’s wish list was long, a nuclear-powered submarine capable of launching nuclear missiles sat prominently at the top. Last December, they released an image of Kim Jong-un grinning while looking at the hull of such a sub, but there’s no indication as of yet that it is close to completion. Still, it’s not for lack of effort, and the Ursa Major appears to have been set to play an important role in that process.
The ship’s listed cargo consisted of two large “manhole covers,” 129 empty shipping containers, and two Liebherr cranes. However, when pressed after the Ursa Major sank, the captain disclosed that the “manhole covers” were, in actuality, components to be used in building two nuclear reactors.
And while he claimed they did not contain nuclear fuel, Spain’s repeated insistence that recovering further data from the sunken ship “is not possible without significant technical resources and risks” has led many to assume that is not the case. The US military has also sent its “nuke sniffer” aircraft to inspect the area on two different occasions since the ship sank, adding further support for the idea that more than equipment could be lost in the wreckage.
The most damning evidence, though, is the steps Russia took to keep the ship from falling into anyone else’s hands.
When doing nothing is the greatest risk
For large parts of its journey, the Ursa Major was accompanied by two Russian military ships. It does not appear these ships were present when it began to sink, though. As a result, when the crew abandoned ship after reporting three explosions on its starboard side, they were picked up by a nearby Spanish rescue team.
Shortly thereafter, one of those Russian military vessels—the Ivan Gren—arrived and demanded that the crew be returned immediately. After Spain refused, citing the need to investigate what happened, the Ivan Gren ordered all other ships to stay at least two nautical miles away from the downed vessel. It then launched a series of flares—perhaps intended to blind infrared sensors on the satellites monitoring the situation—followed by four underwater seismic blasts that finished sinking the Ursa Major within a few hours.
The Yantar—a Russian research ship known to dabble in espionage and other disruptions—arrived at the site a week later and spent five days over the sunken vessel before four more explosions went off among the wreckage.
But while Russia was clearly concerned with ensuring that the Ursa Major would remain at the bottom of the sea, reports indicate that the United States or another NATO ally could be responsible for putting it there in the first place.
A Spanish investigation found that a 50 cm by 50 cm hole in the vessel’s hull was likely made by a “supercavitating torpedo,” which shoots air in front of the torpedo to reduce drag as it travels toward its target. Only the United States, a few of our allies in NATO, Russia, and Iran are thought to possess such technology, and it seems unlikely that Russia or Iran would have used it to bring down the ship initially.
As such, it marks a rare point of escalation at a time when most of NATO—including the US—were trying their best to avoid giving Russia a reason to push harder in its war with Ukraine. But there are times when doing nothing poses the greatest risk, and that truth is relevant to more than just the Ursa Major and Russia’s attempts to hide the ship’s true purpose.
“For him it is sin”
Some of the hardest times to follow God’s will are when we can think of all the ways doing so could go wrong. In those moments, it can be easy to convince ourselves that we’re better off doing nothing than risking relationships, persecution, or humiliation.
For instance, I know there are times when I’ve felt the Lord’s prompting to invite a neighbor to church or to share the gospel, and I put it off because I was afraid it would go poorly and I’d never get another chance. And when I had cancer, I spent far too much time glued to my phone in waiting rooms filled with people in desperate need of the hope only Jesus can provide because I didn’t want to bother them at a time when they were already overwhelmed.
I look back on those moments now and wonder what could have happened if I’d simply had the courage to act when the Holy Spirit prompted me to do so. While I don’t think we’re ever God’s only plan for guiding the lost to salvation or helping those who are hurting, we might have been the ones best suited for the job.
Toward the end of his letter, James writes “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). While most of us suffer from a litany of temptations and sins, I think the sin of inaction when the Holy Spirit has showed us “the right thing to do” is probably near the top of the list for a lot of Christians.
So, take a few moments to pray and ask the Lord to show you any areas of your life where you’ve neglected to heed his calling. It could be a person God has asked you to share the gospel with, a need he’s asked you to meet, a friend he wants you to hold accountable, or any number of opportunities to act at a time where inaction can seem like the more reasonable course. But if the Lord has shown you the right thing to do, ignoring him is a sin.
Where are you guilty of this sin today?
Note: Yesterday afternoon, the Supreme Court once again ruled that the abortion pill Mifepristone could be freely sent via mail. I addressed this subject in last week’s Focus newsletter, and I encourage you to read that article for more on the legal reasons behind the case, where the pro-life movement can go from here, and why there’s still reason for hope despite what may feel like another loss.
Quote of the day:
“The virtue of courage is a prerequisite for the practice of all other virtues, otherwise one is virtuous only when virtue has no cost.” —C. S. Lewis
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