Bulgarian Defence Ministry says no drone debris found on ship attacked in Black Sea

Two military personnel who did an in-situ inspection of the Able, one of the two vessels attacked in Bulgaria’s Black Sea exclusive economic zone on October 6, did not find any drone debris, they and Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters on October 9.

In the operation, involving Cougare helicopters and a frigate, the two paratroopers spent 30 minutes on board the Able with the task of finding and collecting drone parts on the ship, which is currently drifting 55 nautical miles north-east of Cape Emine.

“No such parts were found,” Senior Sergeant Ivan Katsarov told a briefing at the Chaika Naval Base in Varna. He is one of the two who were on the ship.

Katsarov said everything was burned. “We were going inside. Everything was burned. We checked the cargo, we found out it was grain,” he said.

One of the sailors from the Able who was rescued on October 6 said at the time: “It was like the Russians dropped a depth charge on us. The explosion came from below”.

While Bulgaria’s Roumen Radev government refuses to say whose drones were used in the attacks, it is widely believed that they were Russian.

The Navy says that no one can say yet whether the ship will sink. It is currently in a stable condition. There is no spill around it. The situation around the other hit ship is also being monitored.

“The security along our coast is sufficiently strengthened. Today we again destroyed a drone 15km northeast of Sinemorets ,” Navy commander Rear Admiral Kiril Mihailov said.

The strike against the Able was in the surface area, and the engine room was flooded, Defence Minister Stoyanov said.

Stoyanov again refused to conclude whether the drones that hit the two vessels were Russian or Ukrainian. But he gave a specific example of a Ukrainian attack from the past (not a Russian one).

“Talking with hypotheses when it comes to national security is not correct. We need to talk with evidence. Both the Russian side and the Ukrainian side denied it,” Stoyanov said.

“What we see is an increase in the intensity of strikes in the economic zones of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. My conclusion is that this will not stop. The war simply continues with full force,” he said.

“And if until recently the Russian side was striking mainly at the Black Sea ports, now the war is expanding in every direction. I think it would not be correct to blame one side or the other.

“Moreover, if you remember, some time ago the tanker Kairos was hit by a Ukrainian drone. It is entirely possible that the drone was Ukrainian, it is entirely possible that it was Russian,” Stoyanov said.

Unfortunately, we did not find any debris from it to identify it. From the helicopter I saw that the strike was from an underwater drone. The entire engine room was flooded. It is not possible to comment definitively whose drone it was,” he said.

The other vessel attacked on October 6, the Alfa Watan, sank. A search and rescue operation for the crew was called off in 24 hours.

(Archive photo: Vesselfinder.com)