No country has put its name to this. Russia almost certainly carried it out. Russia has not claimed it, and says separately that ships going to or from Ukrainian ports are fair targets, because of Ukraine's own strikes on Russia's shadow fleet. Romanian authorities say they cannot yet call this deliberate targeting rather than spillover from Russian strikes on Ukraine along the Danube and the Black Sea coast.
That's everything we know.
Why this mattersThis is NATO water. And sailors are dying in it.
Bulgaria and Romania are both NATO and EU members. Grain, fuel and cargo move past their coasts on this route every day. A Bulgarian shipbroker, Yordan Petrov, told Bloomberg he won't send his ships into the Black Sea at all anymore. He calls the sailors who still go "kamikazes."
And this has been building for months.
In August, military divers pulled two drones out of the water off Romania, right next to a €4 billion energy project. In September, Romania scrambled F-16 jets to shoot down a drone near that same gas platform — hundreds of workers were on it at the time. Five days ago, Romanian F-16s shot down two more attack drones, this time over Romanian territorial waters.
The numbers tell the same story. Russia has hit targets near Romania's border 54 times this year. Last year it was 28. NATO has flown 42 air-policing missions over Romania this year. That's more than every year since 2022, combined.
In May, a Russian drone carrying explosives came down in the Romanian town of Galati. It injured two people and set an apartment block on fire. German police found an armed drone at Leipzig airport. NATO jets shot down another drone that crossed into Lithuania from Belarus.
So is this a pattern? The International Institute for Strategic Studies looked at this back in June and said it is "highly likely" Russia ran a drone campaign against Europe, mostly toward the end of last year, with some drones traced back to Russia's shadow fleet.
NATO's answer, three days ago: more patrol aircraft, more radar, explosive-disposal teams, intelligence staff and drones, all heading to the Black Sea. Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Rumen Radev, says the attacks cannot be accepted, and that a US Navy P-8 Poseidon is now patrolling the Black Sea at Bulgaria's request. NATO's Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, met Bulgaria's Prime Minister and Romania's President, Nicusor Dan, to talk about it.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission's President, says commercial ships and innocent crews are being targeted, and lives are already lost at sea. Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, says six suspected drone attacks in ten days mark a dangerous escalation, and has warned it could put the world's food supply at risk.
Here's what we still don't know. Whether these ships are being picked out on purpose, or hit by accident. And nobody has officially said who's responsible.
Bulgaria and Romania are both in NATO. Sailors are dying in their waters. And officially, nobody has said whose drones are doing it.
