Drone hits Romanian apartments during Russian attack on nearby Ukrainian port
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What happened during the Russian drone strike in Romania?
Overnight, a Russian drone hit an apartment block in Romania, an EU and NATO member state, injuring two people. The incident happened in the eastern city of Galati, near the border with Ukraine and Moldova. For more on this, I'm joined by Sky News Europe correspondent Alistair Bunkle. Morning, Alistair.
Morning.
What do we know about what happened?
Well, the drone was a Russian one, had all the Russian markings on it. According to the Romanian Defence Ministry, it was in Romanian airspace for around about four minutes. So not long, certainly not long enough for the F-16s that they scrambled to shoot it down. It hit an apartment block. Two people were injured. I think around 70 evacuated from it. Direct hit on this apartment block. Now, whether or not it was aimed directly at Romania, we don't know. The Russians haven't said anything yet. It's a long way. Romania is very much in Eastern Europe, and sometimes when we're stepped back from that part of the continent, you sort of think it's all quite close. It's not. It is a long way.
How did the Romanian authorities respond to the drone incident?
It's about 1,500 kilometers. So we'll have had to have traveled some distance. But whether it was a mistake, maybe partly due to GPS jamming, which has happened before, or whether it was deliberate, we don't know.
OK, I'm just looking at the map, Alistair. So Galati is in the eastern part of Romania. It's not far from the border with Moldova and with Ukraine. So presumably if the Russians were aiming at that sort of tip of Ukraine, it's possible it might have, as you say, lost its direction or whatever and gone over the border rather than being deliberate.
Yeah, look, I'm certainly not for a moment making excuses on behalf of the Russians, but GPS jamming, which is used a lot in drone warfare, particularly in this environment in and around Ukraine, can of course then have an impact on the direction of travel for drones. And that is partly why we have seen drones flying into European NATO airspace before, Romania and the Baltic countries. It is also sometimes just down to incompetence on the Russians' part. You know, they are going through massive attrition of personnel and a lot of the people they're putting on the front lines are not particularly well trained, if trained at all. Sometimes it's just, you know, it is incompetence and they aim it at something and they overshoot.
So it could be all of these things. My gut feeling is that... It's not deliberate. For all of the sort of pretty bold Russian rhetoric coming out the Kremlin, I don't think that this is the way that they would attack a NATO country. But possibly, you know, the Russians probe, they test, they push to see what the response is from NATO. And with the Americans at the moment and their attitude towards NATO, you can see why from the Kremlin's point of view, it wouldn't be a bad moment just to have a little test and see how NATO reacts.
Yeah, well, NATO, at least verbally, is reacting very strongly. Mark Rutter, the Secretary General, says NATO stands ready to defend every inch of Allied territory. Strong condemnation as well from Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. Will it go any further than that, Dash? Will it go any further than condemnation?
Well, I think it will in a way. I think, you know, the Romanians haven't been too rash in this and they haven't sort of started to talk about triggering... Article 4 of collective defense or anything like that within NATO, which of course, you know, with them bringing everyone together and then you really could see divisions. They look as though they're being quite kind of measured in their response, at least initially. They've informed NATO, I think they're going to try and call for a meeting of the UN Security Council, which is, you know, it's not going to achieve anything, but it's a sort of an international forum to discuss. to register people's anger about it. And they've called for more anti-drone capabilities from NATO countries to be positioned in Romania.
So I think, you know, at the moment, it seems like quite a sober, sensible response from the Romanians.
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