An unmanned aircraft crashed on Saturday in Bulgaria, near the border with Romania, where a natural gas pipeline connecting Turkey to Ukraine runs. Suspicion has fallen on Ukraine, whose ambassador was summoned by Sofia to provide an explanation, while Kyiv has described the incident as “unintentional.”
The crash of the unmanned aerial vehicle in a field, which caused no casualties, comes at a time when incidents involving unmanned aerial vehicles are on the rise in Europe, as are attacks in the Black Sea due to the war between Ukraine and Russia.
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The wreckage analyzed is that of a type of unmanned aerial vehicle “widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces,” the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense alleged.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Velislava Petrova summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Olesya Ilastchuk on Monday to demand an explanation.
Kyiv, for its part, stated that it did not “deliberately” target Bulgaria and promised to conduct an investigation. “We can state with certainty that the Ukrainian military did not deliberately direct any aircraft toward Bulgaria,” said Georgy Tikhiy, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without officially confirming whether the unmanned aircraft is in fact Ukrainian.
Incursions by unmanned aerial vehicles have become frequent in Romania, where the crash of a drone carrying explosives into an apartment building in late May injured two people. However, Bulgaria, a NATO member like its neighbor Romania, “has never had an incident of this kind involving a drone carrying explosives,” former Defense Minister Todor Tagarev told Agence France-Presse.
The unmanned aircraft “exploded very close to the Kardam border post with Romania,” near the Black Sea in the northeastern part of the country, and “1,000 meters” from a compressor station of the Trans-Balkan natural gas pipeline, announced Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev.
The crash in a field of sunflowers did not result in any casualties, he said following an emergency meeting of his security council.
Radev did not speculate on the flight path of the unmanned aircraft, which, according to the prime minister, neither of the two neighboring countries had detected it in their respective airspace.
The Romanian Ministry of Defense confirmed that its radar monitoring “did not detect any aircraft crossing Romanian airspace toward Bulgaria.”
According to Radev’s initial statement, “the noise from this unmanned aircraft was recorded by the border police in Romania,” after which “a powerful explosion accompanied by black smoke” was observed by a Bulgarian Border Police patrol—a fact that, according to Radev, proves that the drone was carrying “a significant quantity of explosives.”
Analysis of the wreckage showed that it was “most likely a Maya-type unmanned decoy aircraft,” the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense stated. This type of drone, which is not designed to carry explosives, “is widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces,” the ministry emphasized.
Bulgaria, a NATO member, recently distanced itself from Ukraine, with Radev calling for priority to be given to diplomatic efforts to end the war rather than continuing military support for Kyiv.
Source: CNA/Featured image from the archive.
