When a drone entered Bulgaria’s airspace on Saturday and exploded in a sunflower field near the northeastern village of Kardam โ about 100 meters (328 feet) from a border checkpoint with Romania โย the immediate question was where the aircraft had come from.
Following an on-site check, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry said the drone was a Ukrainian-manufactured Maya decoy aircraft used to activate and deceive enemyย drone systems.
And while both Bulgarian and Ukrainian officials confirmed that the first drone explosion on Bulgarian territory since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was in no way deliberate, the case quickly became politically charged.
The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine’s ambassador on Monday and stressed that “any unauthorized entry into Bulgarian airspace is unacceptable.”
Kyiv promised to cooperate fully in clarifying the circumstances of the incident.
What is known about the incident?
At 8:10 a.m. local time on Saturday, a blast was heard by a police patrol near the Kardam checkpoint on the border between Bulgaria and Romania.
Police and military units cordoned off the area once the exact location of the fallen drone was established in a field.
In his first statement on the matter, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said there had been neither casualties nor damage to infrastructure but claimed that the drone had been carrying a “significant amount of explosives.”
Officials on the ground painted a less dramatic picture, saying the explosion did not even create a crater and that only a few sunflowers had been damaged.
Drone came down near gas pipeline
The drone crashedย about a kilometer (0.6 miles) from Bulgaria’s compressor station on the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline route, which connects Turkey and Ukraine, and in close proximity to a Romanian station.
This initially raised questions about whether this key infrastructure could have been a potential target.
Prime Minister Radev said that neither Romanian, Bulgarian nor other NATO radars had detected the drone, pointing to the country’s lack of advanced equipment capable of detecting traces of such small aircraft, which usually fly very low.
Wake-up call for Bulgaria
Saturday’s drone incident was a wake-up call for Bulgaria in terms of its defense capability.
“Yes, we need new [anti-drone]ย systems that need to be bought fast,” Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said on Monday in an interview with public broadcaster BNT.
While Bulgaria recently reinforced its aerial defense capacity in the northeastern part of the country following an increase in the number of drone incursions in neighboring Romania, these defenses did not prevent the airspace breach.
Stoyanov said Bulgaria wants to acquire up to 10 anti-drone and electronic warfare systems through the EU’s SAFE mechanism and speed up radar purchases, though he admitted this would still be insufficient to provide “comprehensive coverage” of the country.
“Drone wars have been waged next to us since 2023, and no concrete measures have been adopted,” heย said, adding that Bulgaria does not currently have an anti-drone strategy but that his ministry will prepare one.
With NATO members scaling up their aerial defenses, Bulgaria now joins the list of countries in Europe that have registered drone incursions linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Was Russia involved?
As the decoy drone was partially destroyed, officials have yet to establish its exact trajectory before it crossed Romania and entered Bulgaria.
According to Stoyanov, the drone’s GPS system was not protected, which could have allowed its movement to be manipulated.
Although he did not actually name Russia as potentially being behind the incident, he said the crash could have been caused by what is known as a spoofing campaign, an electronic attack that manipulates a drone’s GPS signals.
He also pointed to a possible technical failure, as the aircraft’s chip was found to be defective.
The Defense Ministry declined to say whether the hypothesis of Russian spoofing was being actively investigated and referred DW’s questions to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, which had not replied by the time of publication.
Russia praises Bulgaria’s ‘restrained’ response
Former Defense Minister Todor Tagarev, however, feels that it is most likely that Russia played a role in the drone crash.
“The most probable hypothesis is that electronic warfare led to the loss of control over this drone as a result of Russia’s actions,” Tagarev told DW, adding that Bulgarian authorities have the necessary information to rule out this possibility if it is not the case.
As the investigation continues, the government has not publicly mentioned Russia and is instead seeking answers from Ukraine.
The handling of the case was even welcomed in Moscow, with Yuri Pilipson, a senior representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, praising Radev’s government for its “more restrained” and “more rational” rhetoric toward the war in Ukraine.
Crash highlights Bulgaria’s ‘more pragmatic’ foreign policy shift
The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry used the incident to reiterate that security in the region canย only be achieved through diplomacy after it summoned the Ukrainian ambassador.
“This war will not be decided on the battlefield, but through diplomatic steps,” said Defense Minister Stoyanov, echoing the prime minister’s longstanding position.
A former president and fighter jet pilot, Radev won an absolute majority in parliament in April with his Progressive Bulgaria party.
While the country had until then steadfastly supported Ukraine, the new government brought a change in the country’s foreign policy, promising a “more pragmatic” approach, including toward the war in Ukraine.
Over the past three months, Bulgaria has halted state arms supplies to Ukraine, blocked the EU’s efforts to include the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in its sanctions package and declined anย invitationย byย French President Emmanuelย Macron to join the Coalition of the Willing,ย which brings together more than 30 countries supporting Ukraine.
“I think the Bulgarian foreign minister was too quick to summon the Ukrainian ambassador rather than the Russian one,” Tagarev told DW. “It doesn’t matter whose drone it is, but rather whose actions caused it to end up here.”
Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan