Seven sailors remained unaccounted for on Thursday as Romanian Black Hawk helicopters and naval rescue boats worked in heavy seas around the San Marino-flagged chemical tanker Wine Trader, which reported multiple explosions and a fire about 13 nautical miles east of the Danube’s Sulina mouth at roughly 07:00 local time. Five crew members have been pulled from the water and hospitalized, while authorities said high waves were still preventing a safe boarding of the burning hull.
What Bucharest says happened
President Nicușor Dan told reporters that both the Wine Trader and a second tanker in the area, the Comoros-flagged Yara J, had been struck by drones—the Yara J on Wednesday, the Wine Trader on Thursday morning. The Wine Trader was sailing ballast from Tunisia toward Romania when blasts tore through its superstructure; nearby crews told Romanian media two drones may have hit the ship. The Yara J’s crew extinguished their own fire without casualties, according to the interior ministry.
Moscow said separately that two cargo vessels carrying military-related freight toward Ukraine’s Odesa port had been attacked overnight but did not name them. Ukraine’s military reported a large Russian drone swarm near Snake Island, not far from the rescue zone, while Kyiv and European officials have blamed Russia for a widening pattern of strikes on civilian shipping along the western Black Sea grain corridor.
Search limits and a NATO calendar
Romania’s Maritime Coordination Center mobilized two helicopters and two rescue boats after the Wine Trader issued a distress alert. Interior ministry footage showed a helicopter hovering over smoke pouring from the tanker as coordinators prioritized reaching four crew members confirmed alive on board without endangering responders. Because the ship carried no cargo, pollution risk is lower, but the empty tanks still complicate firefighting in swells that Romania described as “very high.”
The episode lands on a crowded diplomatic schedule. Dan is due in Brussels with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev to discuss Black Sea security, including equipment to protect commercial traffic. Leaders in Bucharest and Sofia were also weighing whether to invoke NATO’s Article 4 consultation mechanism after drone strikes earlier this week off Bulgaria left 11 sailors missing from a sunken freighter. Von der Leyen told EU lawmakers Tuesday that the Black Sea had become “another front” of Russia’s war—language Dan echoed when he promised a Romanian state response once investigators finish reconstructing the attack chain.
Why insurers and shippers are watching Sulina
The Sulina anchorage is a routine holding area for vessels waiting to enter the Danube, meaning a strike there hits traffic that NATO members treat as domestic waters rather than the open sea. That distinction matters for escort rules, surveillance assets, and who pays for convoys. Turkey has again urged both Russia and Ukraine to halt attacks on merchant ships; Moscow insists it targets weapons deliveries while Kyiv and EU capitals say grain and fertilizer cargoes are being hit.
For crews still in the water, the immediate question is whether weather will allow divers and fire teams aboard before heat weakens the Wine Trader’s structure. For NATO’s southeastern flank, the question is whether Thursday’s casualties push Article 4 consultations from theory into a standing maritime protection mission—or whether Black Sea shippers face another week of ad hoc rescues after each drone salvo.