Drones sank two merchant ships and set a third on fire in the Black Sea economic zones of NATO members Romania and Bulgaria on 5 and 6 October, killing at least two seafarers, Romanian and Bulgarian authorities reported. Ukraine blamed Russia for the first attack. Neither Bucharest nor Sofia has said who launched the drones.

Russia has spent months striking ships bound to and from Ukrainian ports while denying responsibility or staying silent. Now merchant vessels are sinking inside NATO members' economic zones without either government naming the attacker, so Moscow pays no political price for hitting allied waters.

Grain ship sinks off Romania

The Royad Mammadov, a Turkish-owned ship carrying grain from Ukraine's port of Izmail to Italy, sank on 5 October near Romania's Pescăruș offshore platform, 20 nautical miles from the Romanian coast, Digi24 reported. The Romanian Naval Authority described the incident as a fire on board. Romania's Interior Ministry said 11 crew members were rescued and two people died.

Three injured sailors aged 22 to 50 were taken to the Constanța county hospital, conscious and stable, with multiple injuries. Adrian Mihălcioiu, the leader of Romania's Free Seafarers' Union, said the ship was attacked by Russian sea and aerial drones in waters Romanians consider safe.

"It is a commercial ship, a ship that is not part of the war… people who have nothing to do with the war, it is not their war," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed the attack on "two Russian drones" and said the ship was in neutral waters carrying corn. Citizens of Azerbaijan and India were on board, and the captain was killed, he said. Romanian authorities have not attributed the sinking to Russia.

Two more ships hit in Bulgaria's zone

A day later, drones struck two merchant ships in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone east of the town of Byala, the first known attack on ships there, Maritime.bg reported. The Togo-flagged Alfa Watan, sailing from Al-Arish, Egypt, to Sulina, Romania, suffered critical hull damage and sank, Militarnyi said. The Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria found only an overturned lifeboat and life jackets at the scene, and the search for the crew continues, Euronews reported.

The Palau-flagged Able, sailing from Galați, Romania, to Istanbul, caught fire, and the Dioscuria rescued its 18 crew members. Both ships are Turkish-owned, Türkiye Today reported. Two sailors with severe injuries were flown to a hospital in Varna, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said, according to AP. Sea and aerial drones hit the ships at about 3 a.m., he said, calling the attack "a blatant violation of international law and maritime law."

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Radev called an emergency meeting of four ministries, the presidency, and the security services. No one from the Alfa Watan has been found, he said, warning that if the war is not ended in time, it "will continue to expand its spatial scope." The origin of the drones is still being clarified, Maritime.bg said. Several Bulgarian media outlets cited sources as saying the drones were Russian, Sofia Globe reported.

Russia's war on Black Sea shipping

Russia had already killed the captain of a Tanzanian-flagged ship in September, and days later it struck another civilian vessel, killing its captain too. Ukraine says that route carries 90% of its farm exports.

Romania has destroyed a sea drone near its Neptun Deep gas project and found Russian drones floating in its economic zone. In September, ISW linked drone crashes in Romania and Moldova to a wider Russian pattern of pressure on NATO.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called for a moratorium on Black Sea attacks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Ankara was stepping up diplomacy to restore grain exports. Türkiye and the UN are organizing new Black Sea truce talks between Russia and Ukraine, Bloomberg reported, citing a diplomat. Russia earlier dismissed Kyiv's offer of a Black Sea ceasefire.

EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas called for a moratorium on attacks in the Black Sea to restore safe navigation and allow Ukraine's grain exports to reach global markets. She made the call at a UN General Assembly side event co-chaired with the foreign ministers of France, Romania, and Ukraine on 22 September in New York.

Since June, Russia has systematically struck Ukrainian ports, grain terminals, and commercial cargo ships in the Black Sea, killing crew members and crippling the export corridor that carries the bulk of Ukraine's agricultural output. The campaign—part of Russia's broader war, now in its fifth year—has disrupted global food supply chains and pushed the Black Sea toward a crisis the EU warned could surpass the 2022 grain-price shock.

Kallas said Black Sea exports have effectively ground to a halt since August because Russian attacks made commercial shipping unviable. The Gulf conflict and climate change are adding further pressure, she said. Ukraine supplies 15% of global corn exports, 10% of wheat, 15–20% of barley, and about 50% of sunflower oil, with around 90% moving through the Black Sea corridor, Kallas said. Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, has shifted some purchases away from Russia and Ukraine as costs have risen.

"Food must never be used as a weapon in the Black Sea or anywhere else," Kallas said. "Wars make affordable food disappear from dinner tables of millions of people around the globe."

Kallas called the proposal a new "Black Sea grain arrangement," separate from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a 2022 deal brokered by Türkiye and the United Nations that Russia left in July 2023. She said the 2022 grain-price surge showed the strategic importance of the Black Sea for global security, international trade, energy, and food security.

She called on the international community to ensure safe passage of civilian vessels, protect critical infrastructure, and restore the trade route. If Russia simply stopped its attacks in the Black Sea, farmers, traders, and international food markets would have the predictability they need at this critical moment, she said. In 2025 alone, the EU mobilized €2.1 billion to strengthen global food security, Kallas added, and the EU Solidarity Lanes have facilitated about €304 billion in trade since May 2022.

At a press stakeout on 23 September, Kallas said the EU was "particularly concerned by the attacks in the Black Sea" and that "Russia is trying to choke off Ukrainian grain exports, thus jeopardizing global food security."

Russia has not publicly responded to Kallas's call. In August, Moscow dismissed a similar proposal relayed by Türkiye, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stating it saw no grounds for measures that would give Kyiv a "temporary reprieve."

A summer of strikes

Russia intensified strikes on Ukrainian ports and commercial shipping in June and July. Those strikes cut Ukrainian deepwater terminal capacity from roughly 7 million to 4–5 million metric tons per month, according to Barva Invest analyst Bohdan Kostetskyi. Ukrainian forces, in turn, struck Russia's grain terminals at Novorossiysk and Taman. Those strikes and the suspension of navigation in the Sea of Azov since July took more than 90% of Russia's Azov–Black Sea grain export capacity offline by mid-August.

The cost of sailing

The Lloyd's of London Joint War Committee has extended its high-risk designation to the entire Black Sea, pushing war-risk insurance premiums to hundreds of thousands of dollars per voyage. Alternative routes through the Danube have partly compensated, but shipping from Ukraine to Egypt has taken 26–33 days, more than twice as long as before.

For Ukraine, restoring safer navigation would reopen its largest agricultural export route, reduce reliance on slower and more expensive alternatives, and help exporters move the harvest and earn foreign currency.

The attacks have not stopped. Overnight on 23 September, Russia struck a cargo ship under an Antigua and Barbuda flag in the Black Sea, killing its captain, a Ukrainian citizen, Ukraine's sea ports administration said. The Navy evacuated the crew and put out the fire.