Signal No. 161 · Black Sea: ships sunk off Romania and Bulgaria

Sea and aerial drones struck two merchant ships at around 03:00 on Tuesday in Bulgaria's economic zone, some 70 nautical miles east of Byala. Rumen Radev, the prime minister, gave the account after an emergency meeting with the defence, interior and transport ministries and the security services. The Alfa Watan sank. The Togo-flagged general cargo ship, owned by Baraka Shipping of Mersin, had Sulina at the Danube mouth as its declared destination; searchers found an overturned boat and life jackets, and by late morning none of its crew had been located. The Able, a Palau-flagged ship of Istanbul's Ocean Eagle carrying wheat south towards Istanbul, caught fire. The Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria rescued all 18 crew; two seriously injured sailors were taken to the naval hospital in Varna. Dimitar Stoyanov, the defence minister, sent an Su-25 on reconnaissance and two rescue helicopters from Krumovo.

"This is an absolutely unacceptable attack in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, an absolutely gross violation of international law and of maritime law," Radev said. On the origin: "We have no information where the attack on the two ships came from, but it is clear: they are either Ukrainian or Russian." He said the attacks were driving up insurance costs and making shipping in the Black Sea extremely difficult. Bulgaria has informed the EU and NATO; it will not ask for Article 4 or 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty to be invoked; NATO referred questions to Sofia. Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Moscow.

Off Romania, the Romanian Naval Authority resumed its search at 06:30 for a sailor missing from the Royad Mammadov, which sank on Monday about 30 nautical miles south of Sfântu Gheorghe; three of the 11 rescued remain in hospital in Constanța. Romanian authorities have still given no cause. Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said the ship "came under a drone attack" and confirmed the death of its captain, Rustam Hasanov, an Azerbaijani national; Palmali, the Azerbaijani group that operates the ship, spoke of "the loss of two of our seafarers".

For the two ships, the Bulgarian press has published AIS records. The Alfa Watan called at Alexandria and Al-Arish in September, left Egypt on 21 September, passed the Turkish Straits and was in the Marmara on 29 September with Sulina as its declared destination; Sulina, at the Danube mouth, serves Romanian and Ukrainian ports. One outlet gives Kartal, near Istanbul, as its departure port. The Able left Galați on 24 September for Istanbul; it was inspected at Odesa on 15 June and at Chornomorsk in January. Neither record shows a Russian port.

Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) officers arrested August Hanning on Tuesday on warrants from the Federal Court of Justice, the federal prosecutor general said. Hanning was president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence service, from December 1998 to November 2005. He is suspected of treasonous espionage, gathering state secrets, attempted treason and acting as an agent of a foreign intelligence service. Manfred D., who headed his office at the BND and followed him to the interior ministry, where Hanning was state secretary until 2009, was arrested on suspicion of aiding him. From March 2012 to March 2026 Manfred D. headed the office of several later BND presidents.

According to the warrants, the two agreed around the spring of 2010 that D. would supply Hanning, for payment, with BND intelligence for use in his private consultancy. By June 2022, according to the investigation so far, Manfred D. had passed him "nearly two thousand documents", many of them classified, prepared for the BND leadership and in particular for the intelligence situation meeting of senior federal officials held at the Chancellery. Once, Hanning is alleged to have used classified material to write an analysis for an employee of "a foreign intelligence security apparatus"; whether it reached that employee has not been established. Over several years he was in "intensive exchange" with a member of "another state intelligence service", supplying political information, partly from D.'s material.

The case grew out of a search of Hanning's premises by Hamburg prosecutors in September 2025 in an unrelated investigation and was passed to the federal prosecutor in early May 2026; it is being run with the BND and the BKA. Manfred D. was remanded in custody on Tuesday; Hanning goes before the investigating judge on Wednesday. The government said it would not comment. dpa reported that, according to WDR, NDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the case does not concern Russia. Konstantin von Notz, a Green member of the Bundestag's intelligence oversight panel, called it "an iron-hard and unfathomable story" and demanded a full account.

The amendment passed its first reading on Tuesday with 106 votes for, 18 against and six abstentions; 94 of the 141 votes are required at each of two readings at least three months apart, and the second is set for 12 January. On 22 September the motion to take it up had passed 99 to 13. Nemunas Dawn cast 14 of the votes against and proposed a referendum instead. Article 137 states that there may be no weapons of mass destruction and no foreign military bases on Lithuanian territory; the amendment deletes both clauses.

Laurynas Kasčiūnas, the opposition leader: "With the current restriction, we cannot fully participate in NATO's nuclear deterrence plans." Robertas Kaunas, the defence minister: "We are responding to Russia's aggression."