The exploits of Ukrainian espionage, officially acknowledged or not, eventually reach the public eye. Around the second half of December 2024, Kyiv’s intelligence services reported that a Russian ship was damaged and stranded in the Mediterranean. It had suffered, they claimed, an engine problem. The GUR, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s spy agency, identified the vessel as the Sparta. According to Kyiv’s version at the time, it was en route to Syria to transport military equipment.