The crew of a merchant ship was missing yesterday after the vessel sank in the Black Sea off Nato member Bulgaria following a drone strike that Prime Minister Rumen Radev described as a gross violation of international law.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack by air and sea drones about 130km off the coastal town of Byala in eastern Bulgaria, but there are growing concerns about hybrid attacks by Russia as it wages war in Ukraine.
Shipping sources said it appeared to be the first such attack in the waters of Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone.
Radev said it was unclear whether the drones came from Russia or from Ukraine, the BTA news agency reported. Bulgaria does not border either country but it holds a strategic position in the Black Sea, where both Ukraine and Russia have major ports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said an investigation jointly with Bulgaria’s navy showed that Russia was behind the attack.
“The Ukrainian Defence Forces were conducting no operations in this part of the sea,” he said.
“This latest tragedy involving civilian ships is a continuation of Russia’s attempt to make the western part of the Black Sea completely unsafe for navigation ... Our navy contacted their colleagues in Bulgaria and established that this was a Russian combined attack using both sea and aerial drones.
Moscow has made no comment on the incident.
Two ships were hit in the attack, Radev said in a televised statement. The crew of one, which was carrying grain, was rescued, with two injured. The other, which sank, was a Togo-flagged ship whose cargo was not disclosed. It is unclear how many people were on board.
The incident occurred some 140 nautical miles away from the Ukrainian coast.
A search has been launched for the missing crew and for any signs of an environmental threat.
A maritime security source said initial assessments of the strike suggested it had probably been a Russian attack.
Radev did not say who was behind the attack but made a reference to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“If this war is not brought to an end in time, it will continue to expand its geographical scope and increase the risk of even a global conflict,” he said.
“We are seeing the war intensify, with all the rules of international law now being violated, and civilian vessels being attacked at sea. This is absolutely unacceptable.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also condemned the attack, saying: “Commercial ships – and innocent crews – are being targeted, with lives already lost at sea.”
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