Two days, three ships, two dead. Drones strike merchant vessels off Romania and Bulgaria

These are the first attacks on merchant ships in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone since the war began, and the first in a long time with fatalities in the Romanian zone. Ships sailing from Ukraine along the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts had been considered relatively safe, because the corridor along NATO shores avoided the waters where Russia attacks Ukrainian ports.

Royad Mammadov: fire, sinking, two dead

At around 11:00 on Monday the Romanian coast guard received word from the rescue centre in Constanța of a fire aboard a merchant ship in Romania's exclusive economic zone, about 30 nautical miles south of Sfântu Gheorghe and nine miles south-east of the Pescăruș platform. Royad Mammadov, a 140-metre general cargo ship owned by a Turkish company and flagged in Saint Kitts and Nevis, was engulfed in flames and sank. The rescue vessels SAR Apollo, SAR Artemis and SAR Ares, a coast guard ship and a helicopter were sent to the scene. Eleven crew were pulled from the water; two died.

Romania's interior ministry confirmed the incident and the rescue but did not officially name the perpetrator; the drone, between one and three according to various sources, is reported by the media and by Ukraine. Zelensky said Russia was responsible.

Bulgaria: the first such attack in its zone

A day later drones hit two ships east of Byala, in Bulgaria's economic zone. Alfa Watan sank and a serious fire broke out on Able; the crews were evacuated, and Bulgarian sources have not yet given an official casualty count. The government in Sofia called an urgent meeting on the safety of shipping, and Bulgarian media describe the incident as the first attack on merchant ships in the country's exclusive economic zone.

Russia has for years struck Ukraine's Danube ports of Izmail and Reni, a few hundred metres from the Romanian border, and drones have repeatedly fallen on Romanian territory. Strikes on ships in international waters along NATO coasts, with fatalities, are an escalation: they mean that the corridor through which Ukraine has exported grain since the collapse of the grain deal in 2023 is no longer safe along its whole length.

What it changes for shipping and for the Baltic

For shipowners and insurers the consequences are immediate: war-risk premiums for voyages to Izmail and Odesa rise, and some of the Turkish and Greek owners whose ships serve that trade will suspend calls until the situation is clarified. For Romania and Bulgaria, which have not conducted combat operations at sea since joining NATO in 2004, the question arises of protecting their own economic zones and whether the alliance will escort merchant ships, as it did in the Gulf of Aden.

For the Baltic it is a precedent nobody here wanted. The Black Sea shows what a drone war against merchant shipping looks like in international waters, next to the territory of NATO states, without a formal state of war with those states. The shadow fleet, the cable incidents and the airspace violations we have reported on all year belong to a different order, but the direction of escalation is the same. Two seafarers from Royad Mammadov died on a ship carrying maize to Italy, in waters that until Monday were considered safe.