Drones hit two ships in the Black Sea: Bulgaria hunts for missing crew as a Togo-flagged vessel sinks

Bulgaria has launched a search operation for missing crew after drones hit two commercial vessels in the Black Sea, with the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan sinking at the scene of the attack. Details of casualties and of who launched the drones were still emerging, but the incident marks another escalation in a war that has steadily pulled civilian shipping into its blast radius. The Black Sea is not a sideshow to the Ukraine war; it is one of its main arteries. Grain, fertiliser, fuel and metals move through these waters to markets across Africa, Asia and Europe, and every strike on a merchant vessel raises insurance costs, delays cargoes and pushes food prices up in importing countries that had no vote in this war. Coastal states including Bulgaria, Romania and Türkiye have repeatedly had to respond to drifting mines, debris and now direct attacks near their waters. For the crews involved, none of this is abstract. Merchant sailors, many of them from India, the Philippines and other labour-exporting countries, work unarmed ships in waters where missiles and sea drones have become a routine hazard. When a vessel sinks, the first question is always the same: how many people were on board, and did they get off in time? Bulgaria's search is now racing to answer it. The wider pattern is grimly familiar. Ports, grain terminals and shipping lanes have been struck repeatedly since 2022, each attack briefly shaking commodity markets before the world moves on. But the geography keeps widening, and with it the number of governments forced to treat the Black Sea as an active war zone rather than a trade corridor. Until the war ends, every commercial voyage through these waters carries a risk that no freight rate can honestly price.