Bulgaria on Saturday condemned the towing of a crippled tanker by a Turkish ship into its Black Sea waters and leaving it close to the coast, after the vessel was hit by a drone attack that Ukraine has claimed.
The tanker, the Kairos, was towed into Bulgarian waters by a Turkish ship and then left there as the towing vessel returned to Turkey, said Rumen Nikolov, director general of rescue and relief operations for the Bulgarian Maritime Administration.
“This is not normal,” Nikolov said at a press briefing in the Black Sea port city of Varna, adding that Bulgaria is seeking an explanation for the towing “through diplomatic channels.”
The Kairos was one of two Gambian-flagged tankers, along with the Virat, that were rocked by explosions on November 28 in the Black Sea off the Turkish coast. Both ships were under Western sanctions for belonging to the so-called “ghost fleet” that continues to export Russian oil.
After being towed into Bulgarian waters, the Kairos was located about 700 meters, roughly 2,300 feet, off the coast near the town of Ahtopol, close to the Turkish border.
Ten crew members are still on board. They requested evacuation on Friday, but current weather conditions do not allow them to be safely removed from the ship, the Bulgarian Transport Ministry said in a press release.
The Kairos and the Virat were both sailing toward the Russian port of Novorossiysk when they were hit by drones at the end of November. Ukraine said at the time that it had targeted vessels “covertly transporting Russian oil.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has criticized those drone attacks near Turkey’s coast, calling them a “worrying escalation” that threatens commercial navigation in the Black Sea.
With reporting by Agence France-Presse