A Togo-flagged cargo ship sinks off Byala and its crew is missing

A Togo-flagged general cargo ship, the Alfa Watan, sank in the Black Sea on Tuesday after a drone strike about 70 miles, or 112 kilometres, off the Bulgarian town of Byala, and its crew is missing. A second ship, the Palau-flagged Able, was hit in the same window. Its crew was rescued. Two of them were injured.

Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the strikes fell inside Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, about 140 nautical miles from the Ukrainian coast. He put the time near 03:00 local, which is 23:00 GMT. He said air and sea drones were used. He called the attack a gross violation of international law. He also said it was not clear whether the drones came from Russia or from Ukraine. Moscow has made no comment.

The Alfa Watan is a Turkish-owned general cargo ship and was reportedly heading for Sulina, in Romania. Radev did not say what it was carrying, and he did not give a crew count. A Bulgarian vessel that reached the site found an overturned boat, rafts and life jackets, and no people. The Able was the grain ship, on the account Radev gave: its 18 crew were taken off, and two went for treatment. Shipping sources told Reuters this appeared to be the first such attack in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone.

Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, blamed Russia. He wrote that attacking civilian ships makes navigation harder, raises insurance and transport costs, and threatens the flow of food. President Volodymyr Zelensky had already blamed Russian drones for a separate incident on Monday, in which Romanian authorities said two people died in a fire on a ship outside Romania's territorial waters. Ursula von der Leyen called the attacks unacceptable and said commercial ships and innocent crews were being targeted, with lives already lost at sea.

Radev's uncertainty is the part that does not fit a clean attribution. A NATO head of government, speaking on his own coast, declined to name the launcher. A maritime security source told Reuters that initial assessments pointed to Russia. That is an assessment, not a wreckage report. Vanguard, a British maritime risk group, named the two ships and placed both strikes inside the Bulgarian zone. MARISKS, another risk firm, called the pair a significant escalation because the incidents have moved out of waters next to Ukraine and into the exclusive economic zones of two NATO members, Romania and Bulgaria. It told captains to watch for drones.

The food point is concrete. One of the two ships was carrying grain. The western Black Sea is a route for Ukrainian and regional grain that no longer moves easily through the older corridor. A strike that sinks one hull and damages a grain hull, 70 miles off a NATO coast, is a pricing event for insurance even if the crew of the Able is safe. Sybiha's chain, from hull to premium to freight to food, is the commercial reading. It does not require a court finding on who flew the drone.

Bulgaria does not border Russia or Ukraine. That is why the zone matters. An exclusive economic zone is not territorial water, but it is not open season either. Radev said that if the war is not ended it will keep widening its map and raise the risk of a wider conflict. He did not announce a NATO Article 4 request, a no-fly rule, or a naval escort. The search for the Alfa Watan's crew was still the operational fact on Tuesday afternoon.

The Monday fire off Romania and the Tuesday sink off Byala are now two incidents on two NATO coasts in two days. Romania reported two dead. Bulgaria has a missing crew and two injured. Until a fragment, a radar track or a claimed strike ties a launcher to the Alfa Watan, Radev's sentence stands: the source of the drones is not established in public. The hull is on the bottom anyway.