Star Metro - Ukraine war reaches shores of Bulgarian fishing village

When Stefan Irinkov, 82, heard a loud bang in the early hours of Tuesday, he thought little of it -- until he learned that a ship had been hit by a drone nearby.

"What am I supposed to make of this? We're going to war," Irinkov told AFP as he trimmed the plants in his garden on a windy day.

Two ships were hit off the Bulgarian coast on October 6, followed by another two on Tuesday -- the first time the conflict has spilled over into the waters off the country.

A total of 21 sailors are still missing after the attacks.

One of the ships, the HS Dignity, struck on Tuesday was hit 17 nautical miles off the coast of Krapets. Of the 16 crew members on board, only five were rescued.

Four of them -- three Syrians and one Egyptian -- were brought back to the port of Varna on Tuesday evening by a border guard vessel. They refused to speak to the media.

Krapets, which lies on Bulgaria's northeast coast around 10 kilometres from the Romanian border, has only around 200 permanent residents.

But in the summer the village with its low houses surrounded by vegetable gardens and fruit trees becomes a tourist hotspot thanks to its long sandy beaches.

"Terrible things are happening, but it's far out at sea," said Todorin Ibovski, 66, a surgeon picking apples and figs with his wife.

Though he said "if someone was awake at that hour, they surely heard something".

- 'Knocking at our door' -

As well as the Guinea-Bissau flagged HS Dignity, a Ukraine-owned vessel was also hit on Tuesday, and EU and NATO member Bulgaria -- often seen as one of the more Russia-sympathetic countries in the bloc -- summoned Russia's ambassador over the attack.

Prime Minister Rumen Radev, a former army pilot who advocates dialogue with Moscow, called for "concrete evidence" of who was responsible, though he added that "logic suggests the outcome works to the advantage of the Russian Federation".

Most people in the village "cannot regard Russia as an aggressor", said Jivko Jeliazkov, 64, who keeps bees, grows vegetables and fishes for shellfish for a living.

But "of course it's the Russians", he added.

Jeliazkov said the war could also be felt in the village through a spike in the cost of living.

"Everything has gone up. The tourist season was very bad. Fuel prices have increased, electricity too," he said.

While Russian strikes on cargo ships docked in Ukrainian ports or close to the Ukrainian coast are common, strikes have also lately started hitting ships much closer to the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria.

At least 163 civilian and commercial vessels were hit on the Black Sea in the first eight months of this year, according to Turkey's IMEAK chamber of shipping.

"The war has been palpable for a long time. It's knocking at our door," said Valeri Baronov, a 71-year-old entrepreneur from Krapets.

"It's better not to talk about this subject. Our only protection is our membership in NATO," he said, adding that the villagers were "waiting to see what debris the sea will wash up on the shore".

"All summer long, I've been picking up bits of drones washed up on the beach," added Baronov, a mechanical engineer by training who harbours a fascination with military hardware.

Ch.Levesque--SMC