Bulgaria ends search for Alfa Watan crew as Zelensky blames Russia

Bulgaria has ended the search for the missing crew of the cargo ship Alfa Watan, which sank after a drone attack off the Bulgarian coast on Tuesday, finding no trace of the sailors, said Rumen Nikolov, head of the country's Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre. Only an overturned boat, three life rafts and floating debris from the ship's equipment were found, he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said a joint investigation by Ukraine and Bulgaria's navy had found that Russia was behind the attack. Russia's embassy in Bulgaria told Reuters the two ships were not on its defence ministry's target list and said an investigation was needed to identify the source of the drones.

The Alfa Watan, a vessel flying a Togolese flag, sank in about three minutes after being struck, Nikolov said; authorities have not said how many crew are missing, though reports put the number at 10 to 12. The second ship hit in the same attack, the Able, was damaged but its crew was evacuated with help from the Bulgarian military.

Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev said there were currently no grounds to invoke Articles 4 or 5 of the NATO treaty, since the attack happened in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone rather than its territorial waters. Bulgaria's president convened the National Security Advisory Council after the attack to discuss steps to increase maritime security in the region.

The attack was part of a wider pattern this week: drone attacks hit three merchant ships in the Black Sea in two days, killing two people, as a leaked EU defence report found critical gaps in Europe's ability to protect naval shipping in the region. Insurance risk assessors have rated the whole Black Sea a war-risk zone.

The first attack happened on Monday, when the Royal Mammadov, a Turkish-owned cargo ship flying the flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis, caught fire and sank in Romania's exclusive economic zone while carrying grain from Izmail, Ukraine, to Ravenna, Italy. Zelensky said that vessel, too, had been attacked by Russian drones; two people on board died.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the attacks. "The situation in the Black Sea is increasingly concerning," she said. "Attacks on civilian vessels are unacceptable." A separate, leaked EU annual defence readiness report found major shortfalls in Europe's naval capabilities, despite plans by EU governments to invest about 98.9 billion euros in maritime capabilities between 2024 and 2029, with critical gaps in naval ammunition and missile stocks, air and missile defence systems, long-range strike capacity and seabed infrastructure protection.