Black Sea Shipping Under Fire, Drone Strikes Turn the Approaches to the Bosporus Into a War Zone

For most of the war, the Bosporus itself has been the quiet part of the Black Sea. Ships queued off Istanbul, paid their lighthouse fees and went north or south as they always had. The danger began past Rumeli Feneri, at the strait's northern mouth. In 2026 that danger moved closer, grew deadlier and started to hit ships with no stake in the war at all.

In the first half of October 2026 at least seven merchant ships were struck by aerial or sea drones off Romania and Bulgaria. Twenty-seven sailors were confirmed dead or missing by 20 October. The Royad Mammadov, a Turkish-owned cargo ship loaded with grain from the Ukrainian Danube port of Ismail, caught fire and sank in Romania's exclusive economic zone on 5 October, killing two crew. On 13 October the HS Dignity sank off Bulgaria with eleven men missing, and the Ukrainian-operated Chelsea 3 was hit the same day. The tanker Yara J, sailing from Turkey to Romania, and the chemical tanker Wine Trader followed on 14 and 15 October, both off Romania.

Photo: Calistemon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How the sea war got here

The first phase was a blockade. After February 2022 Russia's fleet shut Ukraine's ports, and the Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered by Turkey and the UN, let grain ships sail from Odesa under inspections run from Istanbul. It lasted from July 2022 until Russia walked out in July 2023.

Ukraine then opened its own corridor, hugging the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts, and pushed Russia's navy back with sea drones and missiles. The flagship Moskva had already gone down in April 2022; much of the rest of the fleet left Sevastopol for Novorossiysk. By 2024 Ukrainian grain exports by sea were close to pre-war levels, and attacks on ships at sea were rare. Ukraine's government counted 14 attacks on vessels in the whole of 2025.

Then both sides turned on the tankers and the ports. From November 2025 Ukrainian sea drones began hitting Russia-linked "shadow fleet" tankers in the southern Black Sea, several of them inside Turkey's economic zone, some a short run from the Bosporus (more in Russia's shadow fleet in the straits). Russia stepped up strikes on Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi, which handle about 95 percent of Ukraine's grain exports. In July 2026 alone Ukraine's government recorded 35 attacks on ships in port, 22 on ships at sea and 67 on port facilities. In August, war-risk cover for a Black Sea port call rose to as much as 2 percent of a ship's value in two weeks, double the rate at the end of July.

Who is shooting, and who isn't saying

Kyiv blamed Russia for the October sinkings. Bulgaria's prime minister, Rumen Radev, said there was no hard proof but that the logic pointed to Moscow, and summoned the Russian ambassador. Romanian F-16s shot down Russian drones that crossed into Romanian airspace. NATO's secretary-general flew to the region and promised to adjust the alliance's posture. Bulgaria, which had held back, now plans to join NATO's counter-drone programme.

Turkey's voice has been oddly selective. In December 2025, when Ukrainian sea drones hit two Russia-linked tankers in Turkey's economic zone, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the attacks unacceptable and a "worrying escalation". When a Turkish-owned grain ship was sunk in October 2026, apparently by Russian drones, Ankara's public line stayed at the level of general calls for safe navigation. A government that wants to be the Black Sea's indispensable broker is careful not to name the side it keeps doing business with.

What it means for the strait

None of the October attacks happened in the Bosporus, and the strait's traffic has held up. Transits in the first half of 2026 were only about 2 percent below the same period of 2025. But the ships that pass Istanbul now sail into a sea where a grain ship can be sunk in a NATO member's waters, and insurance is repriced every few weeks.

The options on the table are limited by geography and by treaty. Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey already run a joint mine-clearing group, expanded in July 2026 to guard undersea cables and pipelines. Bucharest and Sofia want a broader mission that can escort convoys and police their waters. Any warship from outside the Black Sea that joins in must come through the Bosporus under the Montreux Convention, which Turkey has kept closed to warships since February 2022. Whatever protection Black Sea shipping gets will be built around Ankara's rules.

The front line of this war now runs a few hours' sailing from Istanbul.