Published on •Updated
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has offered her solidarity with Romania after a maritime drone exploded in the country’s eastern port of Constanța on Friday morning, a week after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Galați.
This incident is a “direct consequence of Russia’s war against Ukraine”, she said in a post on social media platform X, adding that incidents like this are “increasingly becoming a direct threat to countries on our Eastern border.”
“Our solidarity with every Member State exposed to these threats is absolute. And our response must match the urgency,” she wrote.
The maritime drone was not part of the Romanian army’s equipment and was not involved in the recent exercises in the Black Sea area, Romania’s Defence Ministry said.
It self-detonated at 10:30 and caused no injuries.
European Council President António Costa also offered “full solidarity” for the country on Europe’s eastern flank, a region rattled by recent drone incursions.
“The EU condemns the repeated violations of airspace of Member States and reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the security of all Member States,” he wrote on X.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, echoed this support and said she spoke with Romania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Oana Țoiu about the incident.
“The ultimate responsibility for what happened rests squarely with Russia,” Kallas said in the post on X.
“As President Zelenskyy told Putin in an open letter yesterday: Moscow can stop this war any day. Next week, EU Defence Ministers will discuss how to further ramp up our support for Ukraine and increase the EU’s own defence readiness.”
European defence ministers will meet from 7**—**8 May in Cyprus for an informal gathering expected to centre on bolstering the bloc’s security against hostile and hybrid threats.
The two incidents in Romania are the latest in a series of drone incursions from both Russia and Ukraine that have hit a NATO member state since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It comes after a recent string of similar incursions in the Baltic states.
Romanian President Nicușor Dan said that law enforcement and security services acted quickly before the explosion on Friday, and that the priority was the protection of lives and the security of port infrastructure.
“With a military conflict on the border, it is obvious that the security environment we are in is a sensitive one, which is why we will maintain a high level of vigilance,” he said, reiterating that the incident is a “direct consequence of the war of aggression unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.”