Drones Hit Two Tankers Off Romania, Seven Sailors Missing, as NATO Says It Has Added Counter-Drone Capability

Since drones sank the Alfa Watan off Bulgaria on Oct. 6 and the HS Dignity on Oct. 13, the Black Sea attacks have moved north: two chemical tankers were struck off Romania's Danube delta between the evening of Oct. 14 and the morning of Oct. 15, and seven crew members from one of them are missing.

Two tankers, one inside Romanian waters

The Comoros-flagged Yara J was hit Wednesday evening, Oct. 14, while anchored about 10 nautical miles from Sulina, near the mouth of the canal linking the Black Sea to the Danube. The crew put out the fire with the ship's own equipment. All 17 crew members, from Syria, India and Iran, were unhurt, and the ship proceeded under its own power toward the port of Constanța.

Romanian reports described it as the first time a drone has hit a ship inside Romania's territorial waters. Earlier strikes were further offshore, in exclusive economic zones.

The San Marino-flagged Wine Trader, a 6,259-deadweight-ton product tanker built in 1989, sent an emergency call to Romania's Naval Authority at around 7:00 a.m. on Oct. 15. It was empty and waiting to load vegetable seed oil from Moldova. It was about 13 nautical miles off Romania, roughly one mile outside the 12-mile territorial limit.

The first strike hit the accommodation block. The captain later told San Marino authorities the ship was hit a second and possibly a third time. Damage to the firefighting water supply forced the crew to stop fighting the blaze and evacuate.

Bad weather and high seas complicated the rescue. A Romanian helicopter hoisted injured crew from the deck. Five people were rescued, one with scalp burns and another with mild smoke inhalation. Seven are missing. The crew included Beninese, Croatian and Bosnian nationals, and Romania's Interior Ministry is organizing the search.

Who did it

No government has publicly established responsibility for the Romanian strikes. An anonymous NATO source attributed them to Russia, according to Reuters. Russian drones were detected in Romanian airspace around the time of the attacks, according to Deutsche Welle.

A NATO statement also described a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, the Sea Destiny, as targeted inside Romanian waters overnight. It said a Tanzanian-flagged tanker, the Dania J, was attacked at the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail. No details on damage or casualties have been released for either.

Romanian President Nicușor Dan has cautioned that officials need all the facts about what happened.

The pattern from the earlier Bulgarian attacks is the same. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's navy had established with Bulgarian counterparts that the Alfa Watan was hit in a combined Russian maritime and aerial drone attack, and said Ukraine ran no operations in the area. The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria denied Russia targeted that vessel.

Russia's ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, told Prime Minister Rumen Radev she had no information from Russia's Defense Ministry about attacks on commercial ships. She did not rule out that they were "a provocation by a third party."

Radev's own position is that the logic points to Moscow. He told parliament on Oct. 14: "There is no logic in Ukraine attacking its own ships and crews, given that the outcome of all these attacks favors Russia... The problem is that we cannot prove it."

NATO's response so far

In a social media post on Oct. 15, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance had increased counter-drone capabilities along its eastern flank after meeting the leaders of Bulgaria and Romania. He gave no details on what was deployed or where.

Bulgaria's Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told a parliamentary hearing on Oct. 14 that Sofia will join NATO's anti-drone initiative "as soon as possible." "Expectations are that by October 30, we will already be part of the project," he said.

The Bulgarian search for the 11 missing HS Dignity crew members was called off over strong wind, reduced visibility and waves. The flag state of the Wine Trader, San Marino, has urged shipowners to avoid transit through high-risk areas of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov "until further notice."

The route at stake

Both tankers were sitting near the Sulina canal, which Reuters described as a crucial export route for Ukraine's Danube shipping. Ukrainian-bound traffic and Romanian ports feeding European markets use the same approaches. Insurers and shipowners have not yet announced route changes in the documents available for this story, but the flag-state warning puts the question to them directly.

Two questions remain open. Romanian rescuers are still looking for seven sailors from the Wine Trader. And Bucharest and Sofia have yet to say publicly who launched the drones. The next date to watch is Stoyanov's Oct. 30 target for Bulgaria's entry into the NATO anti-drone project.