NATO member summons Russian envoy over ‘drone fragments’

Bucharest said that pieces of a Russian military UAV were discovered on Romanian soil

The Romanian Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian charge d’affaires on Thursday, after accusing Moscow of flying a military drone into its airspace. Romanian officials said earlier that pieces of a UAV were found in the eastern part of the country. 

The diplomat was summoned in connection to the “fragments of a drone used by the Russian Armed Forces in the attacks on the Ukrainian port infrastructure,” the Foreign Ministry said. 

Romanian authorities “conveyed a firm protest and condemned the repeated attacks by the Russian forces on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.” 

According to the Romanian Defense Ministry, pieces of a Geran-2 kamikaze drone were discovered on Wednesday near the village of Plauru in eastern Tulcea County.

Although NATO blasted Moscow for “irresponsible and potentially dangerous” activities, it said that there was no evidence of an “intentional attack by Russia against allied territory.”

Moscow has not commented on the allegations. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that the Russian forces carried out strikes on Ukrainian seaborne drones docked in an unspecified location. Evgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for the Rossiya-1 TV channel, reported strikes on a shipyard and a fuel depot in the Ukrainian port of Izmail, which is located near the Romanian border.

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Moscow denies targeting civilians, insisting that the strikes are only carried out against military targets. The Russian MOD said in the past that Ukrainian port infrastructure was used to launch kamikaze naval drones, including vessels that attacked the Crimean Bridge.

On Wednesday, the Turkish Navy intercepted an unmanned vessel similar to those used by Ukraine that was drifting in the Black Sea near Istanbul. The Turkish authorities have also recovered several floating mines since the fighting between Russia and Ukraine broke out in February 2022.

In November 2022, a missile hit Polish territory near the Ukrainian border, killing two people. Although Kiev quickly claimed that the missile was fired by Russia, the Polish authorities later determined that the projectile was likely a Ukrainian anti-air missile that veered off course.