A drone strike sinks the Alfa Watan off Bulgaria and damages a grain ship

A drone attack on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, sank one merchant ship and damaged a second inside Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, about 70 nautical miles, or 130 kilometres, off the coastal town of Byala. Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev called it a gross violation of international law and the first attack of this kind in the country's economic zone. The site is also about 140 nautical miles from the Ukrainian coast.

The ship that sank is the Togo-flagged general cargo vessel Alfa Watan. Its cargo was not disclosed. The number of people on board was not given in the first official accounts, and the crew was reported missing. The second ship, the Palau-flagged general cargo vessel Able, was carrying grain. It was damaged. Its crew was rescued, with two people injured. Bulgarian authorities launched a search for the missing crew and for any sign of an environmental spill.

Radev said two ships had been hit and that it was not clear whether the drones had come from Russia or from Ukraine. He added a wider warning: if the war was not brought to an end in time, it would keep expanding its geographical reach and raise the risk of a larger conflict. He said the rules of international law were being broken and that civilian vessels were being attacked at sea, which he called unacceptable.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky gave a more definite account. He said an investigation with Bulgaria's navy had shown a Russian combined attack using sea drones and aerial drones, and that Ukrainian forces were running no operations in that part of the sea. "This latest tragedy involving civilian ships is a continuation of Russia's attempt to make the western part of the Black Sea completely unsafe for navigation," he said. A maritime security source cited by Reuters said the attack had probably been Russian. Moscow made no comment.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said commercial ships and innocent crews were being targeted, with lives already lost at sea. Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia was making navigation a challenge, and that the challenge drives up risk, insurance and transport costs, and threatens the flow of food to global markets. Able's cargo, grain, is the concrete version of that sentence. A grain ship damaged off Bulgaria is a Black Sea export problem even if the hull does not sink.

The western Black Sea has been a corridor for Ukrainian grain since the main ports reopened under naval escort and, later, under a fragile unilateral passage. Bulgaria is a NATO member and an EU member. An attack inside its economic zone is not an attack on its territorial sea, which runs to 12 nautical miles, but it is inside the zone where Sofia has rights over resources and a duty to manage shipping safety. Radev's phrase, first attack of this kind in the zone, is the line insurers will read. War-risk premia for a hull transiting off Byala are set by whether a strike is treated as a one-off or as a new pattern.

The missing crew of the Alfa Watan is the unresolved fact. Until a number and a nationality list are published, the casualty count on the public record is two injured on Able and an unknown number missing from the ship that sank. The political count is already public: a NATO coastline, a grain cargo, a Russian denial that has not been issued because Moscow has said nothing, and a Ukrainian claim that names the method as sea drones plus aerial drones. The search off Byala will decide which of those sentences survives the week.