Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev summoned Russia’s ambassador on Tuesday after drone strikes sank a cargo ship in the Black Sea and left eleven sailors missing, the second deadly merchant attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone in eight days.
The Guinea-Bissau-flagged HS Dignity sent a distress signal before it went down about 17 nautical miles east of Krapets, near the Romanian border, Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters. Five crew members were rescued; search teams suspended operations overnight because of darkness and poor visibility, with Varna district governor Mario Smrkov saying rescuers would reassess whether to resume at first light.
A second freighter hit the same night
Hours earlier, the Ukrainian-operated coastal freighter Chelsea-3, sailing under a Maltese flag, was struck by three drones roughly 18 nautical miles from the town of Byala, Bulgarian officials said. All fifteen crew members were evacuated; five were treated for minor injuries. Both vessels were travelling without cargo, according to initial government accounts.
The twin strikes extend a pattern that has unnerved NATO’s southeastern flank. On 6 October, drones hit the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan and another merchant ship in the same stretch of water; the Alfa Watan sank and all ten people on board are presumed dead. Bulgarian leaders have stopped short of naming a perpetrator in either episode, but Radev told security chiefs that “the logic suggests that the outcome benefits the Russian Federation,” language he repeated after Tuesday’s attacks.
Sofia turns to NATO and the EU for forensic help
Radev convened an emergency meeting of his security council and said Bulgaria had requested technical assistance from the European Union and NATO to investigate the overnight attacks. The Council of Ministers also asked the European Maritime Safety Agency for support. Despite patrols and debris searches, officials said they had not yet recovered drone wreckage that could establish origin.
President Iliana Iotova identified the sunken vessel as the HS Dignity and said a full search-and-rescue operation remained under way for the missing crew. Reuters quoted Bulgarian officials describing the incident as possibly the second fatal sinking of a cargo ship in the area within a week, underscoring how commercial traffic near NATO waters is now entangled in the wider Russia-Ukraine war at sea.
What changes for shipping near Bulgaria
The attacks occurred just outside Bulgaria’s twelve-mile territorial limit but inside its exclusive economic zone, where Sofia exercises enforcement rights over shipping and environmental rules. Radev called another strike on merchant traffic “absolutely unacceptable” and said diplomatic channels would stay open even as investigators sought outside expertise.
For insurers and charterers, the back-to-back sinkings raise the cost of routing through the western Black Sea. Crew unions have already flagged fatigue and risk premiums on routes that connect Romanian and Bulgarian ports to the Bosporus. Until drone fragments are recovered or a government attributes the weapons, carriers are likely to keep diverting or slowing transits through the zone Radev now treats as an active security corridor rather than routine coastal traffic.