Russia is in such a situation that it has nothing to lose in the Black Sea. Ukraine has been blocking Russian shipping step by step to a very large extent for the past four or five years, and over the past six months Russia has been actively responding to Ukraine in the same way. Ukraine actually no longer has Black Sea ports that function normally - Odessa, Nikolaev, all of this is a military zone. This was announced to Lili Marinkova in the studio “FACT“ and the show “Conversation” by Rumen Ovcharov, former Minister of Energy and former senior functionary in the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
“Until now, the territorial waters of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Georgia have remained outside the scope of attacks. I say “until now“ because there has already been an attack in Romania's territorial waters. If Russia decides to completely stop shipping in the Black Sea, it can do so. A few ships that continue to move in our territorial waters are quite enough to be attacked and shipping to stop“, Ovcharov also said.
“Bulgaria imports millions of tons of goods through the Black Sea. There are goods that we cannot export in any other way – four to five million tons of grain, for example. The same applies to oil supplies to the refinery. Therefore, the issue of the security of shipping in the Black Sea is directly related to the Bulgarian economy“, added the former Minister of Energy.
“However, there is one question that we somehow forget: whose drones are the ones that hit the two ships that sank in the Black Sea? And one more thing – "How did it happen that in a week ships that were sailing 120-150 kilometers from the Bulgarian coast suddenly ended up 15 kilometers from it, close to our territorial waters? Sailing far from the coast is significantly more economical than going around it. Ships approach Bulgarian territorial waters because they feel protected there, and this does not happen by chance," Ovcharov pointed out.
“When such a ship enters Bulgarian territorial waters and is hit there, a big scandal begins. We hear the questions: “What kind of drone is it? Whose drone is it, etc.?“. Otherwise, it is said that there is no point in Ukraine firing at its own ships. But we must ask ourselves other questions, because we have already seen how the initial explanations for such incidents subsequently turn out to be incomplete or inaccurate. Who was explaining to us in 2022, when Nord Stream 2 exploded, that Russia blew it up itself to stop natural gas supplies to Germany. Then it turned out that it was not exactly like that. Now the Ukrainians are not allowing anyone to enter cities under Russian control on the sea, because they are mining the road remotely and now there is a great tragedy there“, Rumen Ovcharov told FACTI.
See more of the conversation in the VIDEO.