Russian drones in airspace, a commercial ship in flames, eight sailors still missing

A fire broke out on Thursday morning aboard the chemical tanker Wine Trader in the Black Sea, near Sulina, and eight of the twelve crew members went missing. According to a report by G4Media, the incident occurred after several drones had entered Romanian airspace over the previous twenty-four hours. The ship, sailing under the flag of San Marino, sent out a distress signal around 7 a.m. local time, reporting a fire in the bridge superstructure. According to the Romanian Naval Authority (ANR), four people are safe, while eight are being searched for. Authorities have not yet issued an official statement on the cause of the fire.

Authorities gave conflicting information about the ship's position: according to the ANR, it was about 13 nautical miles southeast of Sulina, while the maritime rescue service (ARSVOM) put it at 14 nautical miles, and the Romanian Coast Guard said the ship was near the outer boundary of Romania's territorial waters. The discrepancy also extends to the ship's name: the ANR refers to it as the “Wide Trader,” while ARSVOM calls it the “Wine Trader.” According to the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic, the Wine Trader (IMO 8808707) is a 118-meter-long, 17-meter-wide chemical tanker. Such vessels can carry crude oil, acids, alcohol, oils, liquid fertilizer or flammable chemicals, meaning the accident could also pose a serious environmental risk near the Danube Delta. There is no official information yet on the exact composition of the cargo.

ARSVOM's search-and-rescue vessel Apollo set out at 7:10 a.m. for the rescue operation, the Coast Guard sent two ships to the area, and a helicopter from the Interior Ministry's air surveillance unit took off and remains on standby. The rescue operation was still underway on Thursday morning.

The Wine Trader incident is the latest in an increasingly long series. Near the Bulgarian coast, on the night between Monday and Tuesday, drones attacked two commercial ships: the HS Dignity sank, and eleven crew members went missing. A week earlier, another cargo ship sank in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, and ten of its sailors have still not been found. In July, in Romania's exclusive economic zone near Petrom's Pescăruș platform, a drone struck a Turkish ship carrying grain from Izmail, Ukraine, to Italy, killing two sailors. That same month, another ship caught fire near Sfântu Gheorghe after reportedly being hit by three drones. Between July 24 and 26, Romanian Air Force F-16s shot down three drones that had entered Romanian airspace — one in Buzău County, one near Sfântu Gheorghe, and one near Sulina, over the sea. In May, a Russian drone struck a residential building in Galați, an incident that President Nicușor Dan called the most serious to occur in Romania since the start of the war. According to the Romanian Ministry of Defense, more than seventy drone attacks have occurred near the Romanian-Ukrainian border since 2022.

In just a few weeks, the western Black Sea has thus turned into a veritable theater of war, where ships are sinking and sailors are disappearing right next to the territorial waters and economic zones of NATO member states. The attacks typically target commercial vessels traveling to or from Ukrainian and Danube ports, while Russia has so far denied all responsibility. Bulgaria is turning to the UN Security Council and is considering invoking consultations under Article 4 of the NATO treaty. Sofia has asked that Black Sea security be placed as a separate agenda item at the European Council summit beginning Thursday in Brussels. Romania has not invoked Article 4 after any of the previous incidents. The latest fire near Sulina — barely more than twenty kilometers from the Romanian coast — shows that the question is no longer whether the war will reach NATO's eastern flank, but when the alliance will finally be willing to say so.

Ugar