Two separate drone attacks targeting commercial shipping in the Black Sea, carried out within Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), have left one merchant vessel sunk and its entire crew unaccounted for, while a second grain-carrying cargo ship suffered significant damage, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev confirmed in a press briefing.
The coordinated assaults took place at approximately 03:00 local time (23:00 GMT) around 112 kilometers off the coast of Byala, a small coastal town in eastern Bulgaria. Both air and sea drones were deployed in the attack, according to Radev.
The sunken vessel was registered under the flag of Togo. When a nearby Bulgarian rescue craft arrived at the incident site, search teams only found an overturned lifeboat, floating emergency rafts and discarded life jackets. Authorities have not yet confirmed the number of crew members on board or the details of the ship’s cargo, and a large-scale air and sea search operation is currently underway to locate missing personnel.
The second targeted vessel, which was transporting a cargo of grain, fared better: all 18 members of its multi-national crew were successfully evacuated by Bulgarian maritime teams. Two crew members sustained injuries during a fire that broke out on board following the strike, and they have already been transferred to local medical facilities for treatment. The crew is composed of 11 Turkish nationals and seven Indian citizens, Radev confirmed.
Radev issued a sharp condemnation of the attacks, describing them as a blatant violation of international maritime law. “Such an attack within the Bulgarian exclusive economic zone is absolutely unacceptable,” he told reporters. Bulgaria controls more than 29,000 square kilometers of the Black Sea within its EEZ, accounting for roughly 6% of the sea’s total area.
The strikes come amid a sharp escalation of Russian military operations in the Black Sea, a key maritime corridor for global food exports, as part of Moscow’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which launched in February 2022. Radev stopped short of assigning blame for the latest incident, and the Russian government has not yet issued any official comment on the attack.
This incident comes just one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of striking a civilian cargo ship carrying corn. A separate attack near Ukraine’s Odesa port on Tuesday left one crew member dead and seven others injured; that vessel was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands, Ukrainian media reported.
The escalation of Black Sea strikes follows an announcement from Russia’s defence ministry on Sunday, which stated that Moscow would ramp up attacks across Ukrainian territory in retaliation for comments made by Zelensky the previous week, where the Ukrainian leader confirmed Kyiv would increase strikes on Russian oil refining infrastructure.