Bulgarian authorities have suspended efforts to evacuate the crew of the sanctioned oil tanker Kairos, which is stranded off Ahtopol on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast after being damaged in a suspected Ukrainian drone strike last week.

The country’s transport ministry confirmed that poor weather has forced officials to temporarily halt the operation.

The tanker entered Bulgarian territorial waters on Friday and was identified as Kairos, a vessel sanctioned by the EU, the United Kingdom and Switzerland earlier this year for its links to Russian oil movements.

Maritime authorities, border police and the navy began a response, but worsening conditions prevented them from reaching the ship.

The transport ministry said the vessel was first detected on Friday but failed to answer radio calls. Information later relayed by passing vessels and Turkey’s Maritime Coordination Centre confirmed that 10 people were on board. The crew later asked to be evacuated.

Border police units and a navy helicopter were dispatched, but the tanker dropped anchor roughly one nautical mile east of Ahtopol and stopped drifting as strong winds intensified. Authorities have kept the vessel under continuous observation.

Anton Zlatanov, the head of Bulgaria’s border police, told Nova TV that communication with the crew had been established and that they had followed instructions to anchor.

He said the crew wished to be evacuated but this would need to be carried out only when conditions allowed. According to him, the vessel is being monitored using radio systems, shore-based thermal cameras and radar.

The Kairos caught fire last week after what Turkish authorities described as an alleged attack involving Ukrainian naval drones in Turkey’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The Turkish Transport Ministry had stated that the tanker suffered an explosion while travelling from Egypt to Russia and that its original crew had already been rescued after the fire broke out.

The vessel, weighing 149,000 tonnes and built in 2002, previously sailed under Panamanian, Greek and Liberian flags before its current Gambian registration. It was one of two sanctioned tankers struck by Ukrainian naval drones as they headed to a Russian port to load oil for export.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, earlier described the growing number of attacks on Russia-linked tankers in the Black Sea as “very scary”, warning that such incidents threatened the safety of all regional operators and showed how far the conflict in Ukraine was now spreading.

Rumen Nikolov, who is overseeing the rescue for the Bulgarian Maritime Administration, said the tanker was stable despite the poor weather.

He explained that there was no immediate danger to the crew or the environment and that all 10 crew members had sufficient food and water for about three days. He added that the tanker would be towed to a secure position once conditions improved.

Nikolov also said that it would need to be established through diplomatic channels why the tanker had been brought into Bulgarian territorial waters while under tow by a Turkish vessel before the tow was abandoned.

The Kairos incident follows a separate report from Tuesday, when another Russian-flagged tanker carrying sunflower oil said it had been targeted by a drone off the Turkish coast. All 13 crew members from that ship were unharmed.

References: Reuters, AP News