Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for an “objective investigation” into a drone incident in Romania that injured two people. Moscow is prepared to share its assessment if provided with either debris from the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or data about it, he stated during a Friday press briefing.
A drone crashed into an apartment building in Galati, a city in eastern Romania near the Ukrainian border early on Friday. The Romanian Defense Ministry asserted that the UAV originated from Russia.
Putin noted that similar incidents have occurred 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,” he said during his visit to Kazakhstan.
Putin urged Romanian authorities to share “objective evidence” with Russia, noting that Moscow had done 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, claimed the incident was caused by Ukrainian air defenses. He stated that the drone was part of a group of Russian UAVs deployed against targets in Ukraine. “Some of them were shot down over Ukrainian territory, and one of them was probably hit above the city of Reni. Its trajectory changed and it came toward Galati,” Dan said, adding that Romanian authorities have data on the drone’s movement. According to Dan, the incident was not a deliberate attack by Russia but rather a consequence of military operations occurring near the Romanian border.
Russia has previously been blamed for drone and missile incidents in EU nations. A high-profile case involved an S-300 air defense missile that killed two people in Poland near the Ukrainian border in 2022.
Kiev quickly framed the incident as a Russian attack “on the collective security” of NATO, while Warsaw later determined that the projectile was fired by Ukraine to repel a Russian strike on targets inside Ukraine.
