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03-06-2026
BUCHAREST: In some parts of Europe, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine can feel like a distant threat but in Romania, that war is right next door and increasingly dangerous.
In Galati, there is an apartment block with a hole in the roof that proves it.
Residents have just begun returning to check on their homes, after an attack drone slammed into the building early on Friday as dozens of people slept.
It sparked a fire and panic.
We climbed 11 floors up to the roof on Saturday to see where the drone punched through the concrete. There’s a jagged hole, a couple of meters wide, now covered with plastic.
The flat below was badly damaged, and a woman and her teenage son remain in hospital with bruises and minor burns but it’s clear the consequences of this strike could have been far worse; the drone hit the lift shaft on the roof, which absorbed much of the blast.
“It was really very terrifying,” says Costel Patrichi, a resident who’s in charge of the building but “if the drone had hit the side, it could have destroyed a whole floor or more.”
He describes how his phone buzzed with an alert that morning just before 02:00, warning of the danger; a drone was approaching from the Ukrainian border a few miles away.
Moments later came the bang.
“They told us we are protected by NATO, not to worry but look where we are now!” Costel tells me, frustrated like many that Romania’s air force couldn’t intercept the drone.
When a Ukrainian drone targeting northern Russia was recently knocked off course into Estonia, it was a Romanian fighter jet there that shot it down, part of NATO’s quick reaction force.
Here, though, pilots only had moments to react before the weapon was over a built-up area. At that point, interception was too risky.
“Now I’m afraid. If go back to my flat tonight, I will sleep with fear because this could happen again,” Costel admits.
It is the same fear that Ukrainians endure nightly as Russia launches ever more attack drones at its neighbor. Very often, they smash into residential areas, destroying homes and taking lives.
Now Romania, a member of both NATO and the EU, has been hit.
It is the most serious incident of its kind in this country since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
True to form, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims there is no evidence this was a Russian drone but Romania has been very clear: it was a Geran-2, otherwise called a Shahed, and it was Russian.
“It’s sure, because we had another one four or five weeks ago that didn’t explode. We compared and they are completely identical,” Romania’s President Nicosur Dan told media.
The drones are used to target Ukrainian ports on the other side of the river Danube that are vitally important to Ukraine’s grain exports.
On Friday, Romania tracked a swarm of 43 of them as they travelled from east to west.
“One hit by the Ukrainian army changed direction and passed to Romanian territory. That is sure,” Dan said.
Romania’s NATO allies have called Russia’s conduct “reckless” and stressed that Moscow’s war of aggression was to blame for what happened. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
