The Black Sea war just crashed into NATO’s front yard. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said two commercial vessels were struck by drones Tuesday inside Bulgaria’s Exclusive Economic Zone — the first attack on shipping in the NATO member’s EEZ, the Associated Press reports via CBC.
Radev said sea and aerial drones hit the ships around 3 a.m. local time, about 80 miles (128 km) off the coast. The Togo-flagged Alfa Watan suffered critical structural damage and sank at the scene. The BBC says a nearby Bulgarian vessel found only an overturned boat, rafts and life jackets; the crew is missing and a search is under way.
The second ship, the Palau-flagged Able, was carrying grain and caught fire. A Bulgarian ferry pulled all 18 crew to safety — 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals — and two badly injured sailors were flown to a hospital in Varna. “This is an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. It is a blatant violation of international law and maritime law,” Radev said.
Who did it? Officially, nobody knows: the origin of the drones was not immediately established, NATO declined to comment, and the BBC says Moscow has not commented. But the timing is ugly — a day earlier a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying corn caught fire after a drone attack and sank off Romania, killing two, in what Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “a horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel.”
And the bill lands on everyone. “What is happening is seriously disrupting shipping in the Black Sea, driving up insurance costs even further and making shipping extremely difficult,” Radev warned. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it bluntly: “Attacks on civilian shipping are unacceptable.”
Sources: Associated Press · CBC News (AP) · BBC News
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