The SS Bratstvo (Russian: Братство) was a multi-purpose tweendecker freighter owned by the Black Sea Shipping Company in the Soviet Union.

The ship sailed from Antwerp on 19 January 1973, bound for North Korea via Las Palmas and around Africa.

In 1974 she sailed from the Black Sea to Umm Qasr, Iraq, a voyage which again took her around the Cape of Good Hope.

Twenty-three Soviet merchant ships carried military cargo to Syria and Egypt in October and early November of that year.

The Bratstvo, carrying a bulk shipment of Canadian wheat, sailed from Port-Cartier bound for Odessa in early September 1984.

[2][6] After fresh water and fuel were supplied to the ship, the Bratstvo left Ceuta for Odessa on 18 September.

Her crew found a Spanish tug-boat, which towed the waterlogged ship to the Bay of Gibraltar onto a shallow sand bank.

[6] Demchenkov said, "Until the Spanish diver emerged from the flooded engine room, showed us pieces of rubber and shouted 'Russian submarine', everyone thought it was an explosion.

It was later learned that a Soviet submarine accidentally struck the ship with its nose at the end of the third hold, damaging the engine room.

K-53's eventual reporting of the incident evoked the indignation of Defence Minister Dmitry Ustinov and a dressing-down (Russian: втык)[9] of Chief Commander and Fleet Admiral Sergey Gorshkov.

[10][11] Viktor Snisarenko worked aboard the Bratstvo from 1969 to 1983, rising from junior deck officer to master of the ship.