Black Sea: Navy blows up drone off Sinemorets, recovers missile booster

Bulgaria's navy on Friday found floating parts of a drone about 15 nautical miles east of Sinemorets and destroyed them on the spot with a controlled detonation. Divers from an auxiliary vessel had recommended this because the object might contain explosives, and the navy commander approved it. Around midday, the Black Sea mine countermeasures group also reported the booster motor of a Kh-31 missile, which a Romanian minehunter identified and brought aboard. The navy did not link the finds to the attacks on the two merchant ships.

Rear Admiral Kiril Mihaylov said the war is "close to us" – as long as Russia and Ukraine trade drone strikes, wind and currents will carry such objects towards Bulgaria's coast. The freighter Able, hit by a sea drone, has a breach in its stern and a flooded engine room but is stable at least from the outside, the navy said; nobody can yet say whether it will sink. No oil slick was found, and a navy ship is monitoring the vessel.

Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said after the inspection that it was "entirely possible" the drone was Ukrainian, and equally possible that it was Russian. Unfortunately no drone debris had been found to identify it, he said. Anti-drone systems were "not a panacea", and there was no means that could reliably detect sea drones in particular. According to BNT, the minister said strikes in the economic zones of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey were intensifying.