PM Bulgaria says two commercial ships were hit by drones

Afollowing an emergency government meeting, Radev stated that the ships were attacked by several drones about 128 kilometres from the Bulgarian coast.

One of the ships, Alfa Watan, who was sailing under the flag of Togo, suffered critical structural damage and sank at the site, said the Bulgarian Prime Minister, adding that there is still no information on the status of the crew.

The second vessel, the Able, which sailed under the flag of Palau, burned down after the attack. The entire crew, composed of 18 people, was removed by a Bulgarian ferry. Two of the sailors suffered serious injuries and were transported by plane to a hospital in the port city of Varna, Radev said.

The origin of the drones has not yet been determined. This was the first attack on vessels in the exclusive Bulgarian economic zone, NATO member country, on the Black Sea.

These two incidents occurred just one day after the death of two crew members of a commercial vessel with a Turkish flag, struck by a drone in Black Sea waters off the coast of Romania.

The incident with the Turkish flagship was attributed to Russia by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who classified it as a “atrocious attack” of Moscow against “a civilian ship in neutral waters”.

Zelensky said that “Ukraine has on several occasions proposed concrete measures to reduce tension and ensure security in the Black Sea,” stressing that “Russia systematically opts for terror and the sinking of civilian ships instead of normal maritime shipping.”.

In this sense, the spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, pointed out last week that Ukraine “must pay a price” for its attacks on the Black Sea and stressed that Moscow’s goal is to “cut completely” the supply of military supplies to Kiev by sea.