The Romanian military is not able to shoot down Russian drones over the territory of Ukraine, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said, commenting on the incident with the downing of a Russian drone in Romania.
‘In order to shoot them down, we have to fire on the territory of Ukraine, and I think that this is not allowed yet, I have not heard of any decision on this,’ he said.
Source. This was reported by the local edition Digi24, cited by moscowtimes.eu
The Romanian side is monitoring the situation with Russian UAVs during the shelling of Ukraine, the prime minister added:
‘These drones are usually hit by Ukrainian artillery and immediately fall to the Danube bank. There is still no danger for Romanian citizens in the area. Measures have been taken to prevent this from happening again.’
On 25 July, the wreckage of a Russian kamikaze drone was found in Romania. They were found in the village of Plauru, which is located on the banks of the Danube opposite the Ukrainian city of Izmail. Experts from the Romanian Ministry of Defence identified the wreckage as fragments of a Geranium 1/2 drone, an analogue of the Shahed-131/136 drone that Russia received from Iran at the beginning of the war against Ukraine and then launched its own production.
The defence ministry noted that a total of three Russian UAVs could have crashed on the territory of the republic.
‘We emphasise that all the locations identified as possible incident areas are located outside of populated areas and there are no infrastructure elements there,’ the Romanian Defence Ministry said after the incident.
This is not the first time that Russian kamikaze drones have crashed in Romania. On 14 December, the Romanian military discovered a 1.5-metre diameter crater that formed after a drone crashed 4 km from the village of Grindu, which is close to the Ukrainian border.
Last September, Romanian authorities reported three times that drone wreckage had been found in the areas bordering Ukraine. Fragments of two drones were found near the village of Plauru, and the third drone was found in Tulcea province, 14 km from the border with Ukraine.
Background. As a reminder, NATO commented on the downing of Russian drones in Romania, saying that it did not see any signs of a ‘deliberate attack’ by Russia.