The captain of a cargo ship flying the Comoros flag and with about twenty crew members on board has reported a supposed drone attack on the night of this Wednesday while it was anchored in the waters of the Black Sea under the sovereignty of Romania, in the anchorage area of the port of Sulina. The incident triggered a fire on board and is being investigated by the authorities, who have not yet confirmed that the origin is the impact of a drone.
The person in charge of the ship Yara J reported by radio that the upper part of the vessel had been hit by a drone and that a fire had been declared on deck, which led the Maritime Coordination and Control Center to immediately issue an alert to the Romanian Maritime Salvage Agency. This, in turn, sent a rescue vessel to the site, according to Romanian public television TVR.
According to this media outlet, the cargo ship remained anchored off Sulina, about eight to ten nautical miles (between 14.8 and 18.5 kilometers) from the port, and was scheduled to then head to the port of Izmail, the largest river port in Ukraine, located in the lower stretch of the Danube, opposite the Romanian coast and a little over 50 nautical miles (93 kilometers) from its mouth in the Black Sea. There it was scheduled to load petroleum products for subsequent transport to Turkey.
If it is confirmed that it was a drone attack, it would be the first time that a vessel has been hit in this way within the territorial waters of Romania. However, the country's authorities have chosen not to validate this hypothesis for the moment.
The Minister of Defense, Radu Miruta, has stated to the Digi24 channel that, "whether it was hit by a drone or not, an investigation is underway to verify these facts," although he specified that "the radars of the National Defense Ministry did not detect any drone heading towards this vessel." Nevertheless, he emphasized that "this is a matter of great seriousness (...) in Romanian territorial waters."
In the same statement, Miruta explained that the rescue vessel "has returned" to port after the crew of the Yara J reported that "the fire has been extinguished, that they do not need help, and that they also do not wish to enter the port."
Deployment of Spanish fighters on NATO mission
Although the minister has avoided commenting on whether the incident was due to a drone or not, his department has reported on social media that, during the night, its radar surveillance system "detected a group of aerial targets offshore, in the Black Sea." In response, "two F-18 aircraft from the Spanish Air and Space Forces deployed at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base" took off, integrated into NATO's Enhanced Air Policing mission with the Paznic Detachment.
The Romanian Ministry of Defense has also detailed that a RO-Alert message was sent after 8:00 PM (local time), after "two aerial targets penetrated national airspace." "Subsequently, radar contact was lost with one of the targets over the sea, while the other left national airspace at 8:13 PM, heading towards Vâlcove, Ukraine," adds the note.
This second target "continued towards Reni, Ukraine, with a potential trajectory towards the city of Galati, which is why a new RO-Alert message was issued for the eastern part of Galati County at 8:33 PM," the Ministry has specified, highlighting that, ultimately, "the target was shot down by Ukrainian air defense in the area of the locality of Reni, north of the Chilia arm" of the Danube, which marks the eastern border between Ukraine and Romania.
While this is not the first episode with drones in Romanian airspace since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an attack on a vessel anchored in Romanian territorial waters would raise the alert level and add to already deteriorated relations between Bucharest and Moscow. In the summer, Romanian President, the pro-European Nicusor Dan, ordered the Russian ambassador to be summoned for consultations after the Romanian Prosecutor's Office determined that a drone shot down by Romanian defenses corresponded to a model used by the Russian Army in the war against Ukraine.