Contship Jet Hit Off Bulgaria During Sofia Talks, Turkey Keeps Black Sea Security Local and the Bosporus Shut to Outside Navies

On the morning of 28 October 2026 the defence ministers of Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria sat down at the Boyana residence in Sofia to talk about the war on merchant shipping in the western Black Sea. While they were talking, three sea drones hit the container ship Contship Jet about 21 nautical miles southeast of Shabla, off Bulgaria's northern coast. The Liberian-flagged ship, managed from Greece, was on her way from Haifa to Constanța. Her crew went into the life rafts after the managers warned them a third drone was coming in; the ship was listing and had lost containers over the side.

Bulgaria's defence minister, Dimitar Stoyanov, announced the strike to reporters with Yaşar Güler of Turkey and Ştefan-Radu Oprea of Romania beside him. The three governments condemned the attacks on civilian shipping and agreed to set up a Black Sea coordination mechanism, with regular consultations and shared information, and to meet again soon. That was the whole package; nobody mentioned escorts or outside navies.

There's a reason for that, and it sits in Istanbul.

A month of sinkings off NATO coasts

Contship Jet is the latest in a run that started at the beginning of October. On 6 October two Turkish-owned ships were hit about 70 miles east of Byala, inside Bulgaria's economic zone: the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan, which sank, and the Palau-flagged Able, on fire with a cargo of wheat for Italy. A week later the Maltese-flagged Chelsea 3 was hit off Bulgaria and the HS Dignity went down off Krapets, near the Romanian border, with 11 crew missing. The chemical tanker Wine Trader and the tanker Yara J followed. On 23 October the Comoros-flagged Khoryv, two days out of Turkey and bound for Sulina, was hit 13 miles east of Constanța; one sailor was killed and three are missing. Five days later her half-sunk hull was drifting south into Bulgarian waters with no crew and no lights, and Sofia had to put out a navigational warning to keep ships half a mile away.

Nobody has formally claimed these strikes. Romania and Bulgaria have said the pattern points to Russia, and the risk firm Ambrey put Russia behind about 90 percent of strikes on merchant ships over a recent 45-day stretch; Moscow denies it. Ukraine has its own campaign against Russian-linked tankers further east, off Novorossiysk and Sochi. Ambrey and the IMO count more than 570 ships attacked in the Black Sea since January, and at least 40 seafarers dead, more than in the Strait of Hormuz over the same period (we follow that other chokepoint on hormuz.net).

Most of these ships were on the coastal lane that runs from the Danube and Constanța south along Bulgaria to the Bosporus. It's the route Ukraine's grain and Romania's trade depend on, and it ends at Rumeli Feneri and Anadolu Feneri, the two lighthouses at the strait's northern mouth. The attacks have been just outside territorial waters, in the economic zones, which matters for insurance: underwriters now treat nearly the whole sea as top-band war risk, with the territorial waters of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey the main exceptions. Our earlier piece on Black Sea war risk and shipping has the background.

Why the help can only come from three navies

Romania and Bulgaria are NATO members with small navies. Bulgaria has asked the alliance for "the full range of available capabilities", missile systems, counter-drone kit and patrol aircraft among them. Warships from outside the sea weren't on the list, and that isn't an oversight.

Under the Montreux Convention, warships from outside the Black Sea need advance notice to Turkey, can only be light surface ships, can't total more than 30,000 tons inside the sea (45,000 in some cases) and can stay 21 days. Those limits alone would make a standing Western escort force awkward. But since 28 February 2022 Turkey has gone further. It applied Article 19, which bars the warships of countries at war, and asked every other government to keep its warships out too. The text doesn't require that second step. Ankara chose it.

On 19 October an unnamed Turkish official told RIA Novosti that Turkey would "firmly maintain its position on the passage of warships through the straits", that it was in "close contacts with the Russian side on shipping security in the Black Sea", and that the aim was to stop further escalation. Erdoğan had raised the attacks with Vladimir Putin by phone on 7 October and his invitation for Putin to visit Turkey is still open. Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister, said on 8 October that "both sides are engaged in tremendous attacks" to win the upper hand before winter, and Ankara sent Moscow and Kyiv a proposal to keep the sea out of the war. The Turkish press reported the details: separate merchant routes, a Ukrainian one along the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts to the Bosporus and a Russian one along the Georgian and Turkish coasts. Neither side has signed up.

So the arithmetic is simple. Any protection for the western lane will come from the three coastal states, and the biggest of the three navies is Turkey's. That's the design Ankara has been building for two years, from the mine-clearing group it runs with Bucharest and Sofia since 2024 to the maritime command in Beykoz it set up for a postwar force. The coordination mechanism agreed in Sofia fits the same pattern. Turkey keeps the gate, and the gate makes Turkey the indispensable partner.

What it means at the strait

For the Bosporus itself the risk shows up first in the counts. Ships bound for Constanța, Sulina and the Danube ports, and grain coming the other way, are a real share of what passes Istanbul, and the first half of 2026 was already slightly down on 2025 (the transit file). Turkish sailors say many of them now turn down Black Sea jobs, and war-risk cover for the open sea can run to 15 percent of a hull's value, about twice the Gulf rate.

Turkey's position has some logic. Opening the straits to NATO warships would hand Moscow a pretext, and a sea full of foreign frigates and Russian drones is not obviously safer. It also leaves Ankara free to keep buying Russian oil and talking to the Kremlin while its two NATO neighbours count their missing sailors. The ministers in Sofia agreed to talk more often.

Off Shabla, a tanker was sent to stand by the Contship Jet.