A Cargo Ship Is Sunk by Drones Inside Bulgaria’s Waters
Two commercial vessels were hit by air and sea drones about seventy nautical miles off the Bulgarian coast, inside the country’s exclusive economic zone. The Togo-flagged, Turkish-owned Alfa Watan sank at the scene with its crew missing; all eighteen aboard the grain carrier Able were rescued, two of them seriously injured. Nobody has claimed the attack and Bulgaria has not attributed it.
President Rumen Radev called it “an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone” and “a blatant violation of international law and maritime law”, and then said the thing that matters more: “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”. Note what he did not do, which was name Russia. Ursula von der Leyen said the Black Sea situation was “increasingly concerning” and that attacks on civilian shipping were unacceptable, “with lives already lost at sea”. This is the third civilian vessel struck in three days: a Turkish-owned ship carrying corn was sunk inside Romania’s economic zone on Sunday, which Volodymyr Zelensky attributed to two Russian drones, and a Marshall Islands-flagged ship was hit near Odesa today, killing a crew member. The pattern is a war spreading sideways into the economic zones of EU member states, and the commercial consequence is already visible — Mr Radev noted that the disruption is “driving up insurance costs even further”, which is how a drone strike at sea reaches a European shelf. Of the rescued crew, eleven were Turkish and seven Indian. Watch whether Sofia or Brussels formally attributes the attack.