The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, denied this Tuesday any participation of his country in the attacks against two Bulgarian freighters in the Black Sea, one of which was ultimately sunk during the past night, and pointed directly to Russia as responsible.
"The Ukrainian Defense Forces did not carry out operations in this area of the sea," Zelensky stated in a message disseminated on his social networks, where he emphasized that this "latest tragedy" is framed within Moscow's attempts to turn this maritime route into a "completely unsuitable" passage for navigation.
The Ukrainian leader expressed his solidarity with those affected and indicated that the country's Intelligence services are gathering all available data on what happened and contrasting the information with the authorities of Bulgaria.
"Our Navy contacted its counterpart in Bulgaria, and it has been established that it was a combined Russian attack using maritime and aerial drones," pointed out the president of Ukraine, who on Monday had already denounced another attack against a vessel flying the Turkish flag in the Black Sea, in which two people died.
According to Bulgarian maritime authorities, two merchant ships, one sailing under the flag of Palau and another with the flag of Togo, were hit early this Tuesday off the coast of Bulgaria in the Black Sea. One of them ended up sunk and all its crew is listed as missing.
On the second ship, which suffered a fire as a result of the attack, its 18 crew members managed to abandon the vessel and were rescued by a ferry that altered its route to come to their aid. The Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, described what happened as "absolutely unacceptable" and a clear violation of International Law.
While awaiting an official response from Moscow regarding this specific incident, last week the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, already warned that Ukraine would have to "pay a price" for its actions in the Black Sea and defended that Russian operations aim to "completely cut off" the supply of military supplies to Kiev through this maritime corridor.