Black Sea: Ship carrying Ukrainian grain sinks in Romania’s EEZ with two dead; Zelenskyy blames Russian drone strike

A cargo ship carrying Ukrainian grain sank on Monday, October 5, in the Black Sea, inside Romania’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), after a fire. Two crew members were found dead and eleven were rescued, Romania’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attributed the sinking to a strike by two Russian drones, while the Romanian authorities have not announced the cause of the fire.

What Bucharest announced

According to the ministry’s statement, at around 11:00 the search and rescue coordination centre in Constanța informed the Coast Guard that a fire had broken out on a merchant ship sailing about 30 nautical miles south of Sfântu Gheorghe, at the mouth of the Danube. A search and rescue operation was launched, with a Coast Guard vessel coordinating the response at the scene. A helicopter of the ministry’s General Inspectorate of Aviation winched up the injured so that they could be given emergency medical care. The ship sank outside Romanian territorial waters.

Zelenskyy, in a post, described a horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian ship that was sailing in neutral waters, was carrying corn and belongs to Turkey. He said citizens of Azerbaijan and India were on board and that the captain was killed. “Ukraine has repeatedly proposed concrete steps to de-escalate and guarantee security in the Black Sea,” he wrote, adding that Russia “consistently chooses terror and sinking civilian ships instead of normal navigation”. He also said pressure is needed to restore global food security.

The ship and its route

The vessel, named Royad Mammadov and flying the flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis, had loaded at the Ukrainian port of Izmail, on the Danube, and according to Romanian media was bound for Italy. Turkey’s ambassador in Bucharest, Özgür Kıvanç Altan, told the Anadolu news agency, as reported by Romania’s Ziare.com, that the ship was not flying the Turkish flag and had no Turkish nationals in its crew, but is co-owned by a Turkish company. He described the incident as sad and worrying and said the embassy is in constant contact with the Romanian Border Police. According to the Kyiv Independent, which cites Romanian media, the ship was about 20 nautical miles from the coast and 9 nautical miles south-east of OMV Petrom’s Pescăruș offshore platform.

A few hours earlier, on the night of October 4 to 5, Romanian Defence Ministry radars had detected an aerial target east of Vylkove in Ukraine, close to the border. As the ministry announced, two Spanish F-18s flying an enhanced air policing mission took off from Mihail Kogălniceanu air base and an alert was sent to residents of northern Tulcea county; no violation of Romanian airspace was established.

It is not the first sinking of a merchant ship in Romania’s EEZ in recent months. On August 27 the cargo ship Progress IV, sailing from the Ukrainian port of Reni to Turkey, sank after reporting that it had been hit by a drone, and its twelve-member crew was rescued, as Ukraine’s Hromadske had reported. The Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs said the operation at the scene was still under way, while there has been no official announcement from Bucharest on the cause of the fire.