MS Ukraina was one of six Soviet Krim-class ocean liners during the late 1920s built for the Black Sea State Shipping Company.

[1] She had a pair of six-cylinder, two-stroke diesel engines, each driving a screw propeller, and the engines were rated at a total of 1,374 nominal horsepower.

[3] Ukraina was one of the four ships in the class that were constructed in 1928 at the Baltic Works shipyard in Leningrad.

[2][1] After the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) by Nazi Germany and its allies, Ukraina was used for military tasks.

The ship arrived in Odessa on 14 October to begin loading the city's defenders and reached Sevastopol on the 16th without damage despite repeated German air attacks.