Bulgarian PM confirms US reconnaissance aircraft on duty over Black Sea
Bulgarian Prime Minister Roumen Radev confirmed on October 20 that a US Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft is on duty over the Black Sea.
Recent days have seen drone attacks on merchant vessels in the Black Sea off the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania, with two ships sunk and loss of life.
Italian website italmilradar said that a US Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon carried out a mission over the western Black Sea on October 18. The aircraft arrived in Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast on Sunday afternoon after taking off from the US Naval Air Station in Sigonella.
As The Sofia Globe reported earlier, Nato partner aircraft were expected to arrive in Bulgaria due to the increased attacks on ships in the Black Sea, Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told Bulgarian National Television in an interview on October 18.
On October 20, Bulgaria’s Transport Minister Georgi Peev said that debris had been found on the Chelsea-3, one of the ships attacked on October 13, and this debris was to be analysed.
Radev, who has been reluctant to pin blame for the attacks on the vessels, told reporters that the investigation teams were “working actively”.
“Teams from our allies will arrive tomorrow and I hope we will get an answer about the type of drone,” Radev said.
The US aircraft is patrolling the Black Sea for reconnaissance and detection of any activity that could pose a risk, he said.
How long it will stay there depends on the situation, Radev said.
On October 20 at 6.30pm outside the Presidency building in central Sofia, there is to be a protest against President Iliana Yotova and Radev, with the theme “Your ‘peace’ is capitulation, your ‘diplomacy’ is isolation”.
According to the organisers of the protest, “Merchant ships are being attacked and sunk in the Black Sea. People are dying. Russian drones are reaching dangerously close to our borders. Military depots are exploding; critical infrastructure is coming under attack. Yet here, we are being lulled into a false sense of security with promises that “good relations” with the aggressor will save us.
They will not save us!”
(Photo: Balon Greyjoy, via Wikimedia Commons)
