Romania has proposed the creation of a joint NATO military command for the Black Sea, grouping the three allied coastal states, after a run of drone attacks on merchant shipping in Romanian and Bulgarian waters.
Defence Minister Radu Miruță said on October 14 that he had put the idea to his Bulgarian counterpart, Dimitar Stoyanov, during a telephone call and had suggested the two men sign a joint letter to NATO’s leadership.
He proposed that both the location of the command and its leadership rotate among all the coastal allies, which alongside Romania and Bulgaria means Turkey.
Romania was ready to take charge and host the structure on its own Black Sea coast from 2028, Miruță said. Until then it would accept the command operating from the Turkish coast, with Romanian and Bulgarian officers taking part.
The incidents at sea obliged the coastal states to act rather than wait, he argued, adding that Bucharest intended to protect its security and economic interests in the region while respecting international law.
Drone incursions in the air and at sea could no longer be treated as isolated national problems, the minister said. Repeated Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure had created collateral risks for neighbouring populations and appeared designed to test how quickly national authorities and allies reacted.
A Turkish-owned grain ship caught fire and sank in Romania’s exclusive economic zone on October 5, killing two crew members. Two more vessels were struck in Bulgaria’s economic zone on October 6 and two others on October 13, one of which went down with 11 crew missing.
Bulgaria has since asked the European Union and NATO for technical help in identifying who was behind the strikes, which Prime Minister Rumen Radev said were either Russian or Ukrainian.
Hours after Miruță’s post, the captain of a Comoros-flagged tanker anchored off Sulina reported a suspected drone strike that set the vessel alight. That would be the first such hit inside Romanian territorial waters, though the ministry has not confirmed the cause.
The ministry said it had identified two air targets and scrambled two Spanish F-18 fighters serving on NATO’s air policing mission in Romania.
Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey already run a joint mine countermeasures group, operational since 2024 and commanded on a six-month rotation, though it has no mandate to defend merchant ships against drones.
The European Union’s Black Sea strategy, presented in May 2025, promised a maritime security hub that has yet to appear. The bloc has no naval mission of its own in the region, while its Aspides operation continues to escort shipping through the Red Sea.
