Bulgarian prime minister says 2 commercial vessels hit by drones in economic zone

At about 0300 local time on Tuesday, sea‑borne and aerial drones slammed two commercial vessels in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone, roughly 70 nautical miles east of the town of Byala. The second strike ignited a fire on the Palau‑flagged Able, whose 18‑person crew was rescued by the nearby Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria. Two of those rescued – one with burns, another with a head injury – were taken to hospital, while the remaining 16 were ferried ashore on a Border Police patrol boat.

The search for the missing crew of the Alfa Watan is under way; the last known position, recorded by vessel‑tracking site VesselFinder, placed the sunken ship en route to the Romanian port of Sulina. No official tally of how many sailors were aboard the Alfa Watan has been released, and the cargo it carried remains unidentified.

The incidents arrive against a backdrop of escalating drone warfare in the Black Sea. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been trading unmanned attacks on commercial shipping, with Moscow reportedly retaliating for Kyiv’s strikes on Russian refineries. A day earlier, a Turkish‑owned grain carrier was also hit by a drone and sank after catching fire. Ukrainian authorities announced a separate drone strike on a Marshall Islands‑flagged vessel carrying rapeseed oil, killing one crew member and injuring seven. While the origin of the drones that struck the Bulgarian vessels has not been confirmed, the pattern fits the broader tit‑for‑tat campaign between Kyiv and Moscow that has increasingly endangered neutral shipping lanes.

Amid the crisis, Bulgaria is simultaneously deepening its economic outreach to Beijing. Wang warned that recent EU legislation – the Industrial Accelerator Act, the revised Cybersecurity Act 2 and heightened foreign‑subsidy scrutiny – threatens Chinese investment in Europe, and urged Bulgaria to champion a “stable and balanced” trade partnership with China within the EU framework.

The immediate priority remains the fate of the Alfa Watan’s crew. Bulgarian authorities have dispatched two helicopters, a Su‑25, and border‑police vessels, but the ship vanished from radar at 0900 local time, and its crew has not been located. Beyond the human toll, the attacks highlight the vulnerability of Black Sea trade routes and could pressure NATO allies to reassess maritime security protocols. Whether the drones were launched from Russian‑controlled territory, Ukrainian‑held islands, or a third party, the incident underscores how the war’s spill‑over effects now touch a NATO state’s own economic zone, potentially reshaping diplomatic dialogues from the Brussels‑Moscow corridor to Sofia‑Beijing negotiations.