Three sea drones hit the Greek-owned container ship Contship Jet off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast on Wednesday, about 21 nautical miles southeast of Shabla, starting a fire and leaving the ship with a heavy list to starboard. All 18 crew members — 14 Filipinos and 4 Ukrainians — were evacuated safely ashore, with no injuries reported, Bulgarian officials and the ship's operator said.
The crew abandoned ship into a lifeboat and life rafts; Bulgarian National Radio reported that while some of the crew were on a raft near the ship, another drone was heading towards them by sea. The Bulgarian Navy sent three vessels and the Border Police one more; the Navy took eight seafarers off and found the other ten in the ship's lifeboat, and all 18 were taken to Varna for medical checks. A spokesperson for Contships Management, the Athens company that operates the ship, said: "The crew is safe. We thank Bulgaria for carrying out the rescue operation so quickly." The ship, which was sailing from Haifa, Israel, to Constanța, Romania, with 421 containers, remained afloat and was later reported drifting southwards; what the containers hold has not been published. A report that containers of hazardous substances were scattered in the area was denied by Yavor Dimitrov, director of the Black Sea Basin Directorate, who said no hazardous substances had been found aboard and that seawater samples would be taken; no spill is confirmed.
Who launched the drones is unknown: no one has claimed responsibility, and no evidence identifying the attacker has been published. Bulgaria's Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov confirmed the ship was attacked by three drones but did not name their affiliation. Ukraine has blamed Russia for this series of attacks on merchant ships off Bulgaria; Prime Minister Rumen Radev told parliament earlier in October that "the logic points in that direction [Russia]… The problem is that we cannot prove it." Moscow has denied involvement in the attacks.
The strike landed while the defence ministers of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey were meeting in Sofia on Black Sea security. The three countries issued a joint statement saying they "unequivocally condemn drone attacks against commercial vessels in the Black Sea," calling them a dangerous escalation and agreeing a trilateral coordination mechanism with stronger intelligence sharing and maritime surveillance. Turkey's Defence Minister Yaşar Güler, in the war's most direct Turkish intervention to date as Reuters describes it, warned both Russia and Ukraine against attacks on commercial vessels: "We follow with concern the intense attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea and call on the sides to act with common sense, in line with the principle of navigational safety in open seas." Ankara says it is waiting for responses to a proposal it sent both sides aimed at stopping the attacks and ensuring the safe shipment of grain. The Contship Jet is at least the sixth merchant vessel attacked off Bulgaria in recent weeks by Reuters' count, though tallies of the strikes and of the seafarers killed or missing differ by source and scope.
For citizens far beyond the Black Sea, the route under attack carries Ukraine's grain exports and much of the region's food and energy trade into world markets. Every drone that hits a civilian container ship raises the risk — and the insurance cost — of moving food and fuel by sea, and those costs travel all the way to supermarket shelves and household energy bills. That is why three NATO allies are now coordinating patrols and why Turkey is pressing both sides to keep commercial shipping out of the war: keeping the grain corridor open is, in the end, about the price of bread.
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