Drone Strikes Sink One Ship and Set Another Ablaze in Bulgaria's Black Sea Zone as Search for Missing Crew Continues

Bulgarian maritime authorities mounted an extensive search operation in the Black Sea on Tuesday after drone attacks struck two merchant vessels, sinking one of them and leaving its crew unaccounted for, according to officials in Sofia.

The search was concentrated roughly 70 nautical miles east of Byala, a coastal town in eastern Bulgaria, where rescue teams scoured the water for survivors or traces of the missing sailors. Prime Minister Rumen Radev, who briefed reporters on the unfolding situation, did not specify how many people remained missing, saying only that search efforts were continuing with urgency.

The vessel that went down flew the flag of Togo, a small West African nation whose registry is widely used in international commercial shipping, according to the specialised maritime news outlet Maritime.bg. The second ship, registered in the Pacific island state of Palau, was hit by a drone and caught fire, but its crew — a mix of Turkish and Indian nationals — was successfully rescued.

A boat dispatched to the scene found overturned life rafts and floating life jackets near the position where the Togolese-flagged ship had sunk, but recovered no crew members from that vessel, Radev said. The absence of survivors at the wreck site raised fears that the missing sailors may have been trapped below deck or swept away before rescuers could reach them.

The rescue effort drew on multiple assets. The Bulgarian ferry Dioskuria, which happened to be in the vicinity, witnessed the explosion of the first ship and immediately headed toward the scene. It was joined by a fast patrol boat from the Bulgarian Navy, which pulled two crew members from the water — one suffering from burns and the other from a head injury. The remaining 16 survivors were recovered by border guard patrol vessels, bringing the total number rescued from the second ship to 18. Eleven of those saved are Turkish citizens and seven are Indian, according to the prime minister's accounting.

Radev described the strikes as a grave breach of international norms. He said the attack "constitutes a flagrant violation of maritime law and, more broadly, of the rules of navigation," and stressed that such an incident inside Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone — a maritime belt where a coastal state holds sovereign rights over resources and economic activity — was "absolutely unacceptable."

"Two merchant vessels were attacked by sea and air drones," Radev told reporters. "This has been formally confirmed by the crews, and both ships were hit." The prime minister's account, based on testimony from the surviving sailors, indicates that unmanned systems operating both on the water and in the air were used in the assault, a mode of attack that has become increasingly common in the Black Sea since the war in Ukraine began.

Details about the two ships' voyages added to the picture of routine commercial traffic caught in a conflict zone. According to Radev, one of the vessels was carrying wheat and was sailing southward when it was struck, while the other — the ship that ultimately sank — was heading north. The cargo aboard the sunken vessel has not yet been determined, authorities said.

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen also weighed in, calling attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea "unacceptable" and describing the incidents as deeply worrying. "While exact circumstances of these incidents are still being established, the developments are very concerning," she wrote in a statement posted online. Her remarks underscored the concern in Brussels that the war's spillover into commercial maritime corridors is endangering not only regional trade but also global supply chains that depend on Black Sea grain and other commodities.

The strikes mark the latest in a string of attacks that have transformed the Black Sea from a busy commercial artery into one of the war's most dangerous frontiers. Turkey's Chamber of Maritime Commerce (IMEAK) reported last month that 226 civilian and commercial vessels have been attacked in the Black Sea since the war began in February 2022, with the overwhelming majority of those incidents occurring this year. The figure illustrates how quickly the security environment for shipping has deteriorated.

The wider regional picture is equally grim. Romania reported on Monday that a grain ship had caught fire and sunk in the Black Sea, killing one crew member and leaving another missing. Ukraine blamed that attack on Russia.

In recent months, the violence that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has spread to the eastern Black Sea, drawing in shipping lanes that serve Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and beyond. The mounting toll on merchant vessels has pushed insurance premiums sharply higher and complicated route planning for operators who must weigh the risk of drone strikes against the need to keep goods moving.

Radev warned that the consequences extend far beyond any single vessel or crew. "The situation significantly complicates navigation in the Black Sea, drives up insurance premiums, and makes maritime traffic extremely difficult," he said. He also repeated a long-standing caution that the conflict, if left unchecked, could continue to widen. "As I have long maintained, if this war is not halted in time, it will continue to expand its geographical reach and increase risks, including the risk of a global conflict," the prime minister said.

In response to the attacks, the Bulgarian government said it would convene an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the strikes and consider its next steps. The outcome of that gathering could shape Bulgaria's posture toward protecting its economic zone and the commercial vessels that transit it.

For the families of the missing sailors, the immediate focus remained on the search operation off Byala, where vessels and aircraft continued to comb the sea. With life rafts found overturned and no sign of the crew, officials offered no timeline for how long the effort would continue, leaving the fate of the Togolese-flagged ship's sailors — and the wider question of how to safeguard civilian shipping in a war zone — unresolved.