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Romania said Friday it found what appears to be debris from a drone on an island on the Danube river on its territory near the Ukrainian border, where Russia regularly launches assaults on Ukraine’s port infrastructure.
“On the evening of March 28, 2024, fragments were identified that appear to come from an aerial device (drone), on an agricultural field in the Great Brăila Island,” Romania’s defense ministry said in a statement.
The origin of the drone has not yet been identified. Romania’s defense ministry said authorities will be conducting an investigation into the remains Friday.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said the probable drone crash wasn’t the first occurrence, but he hoped it would be “the last.”
“At the moment we have no casualties and no such problems,” he said, Romanian media reported. “We hope that they will be, I repeat, as small as possible, or to avoid these events as much as possible.”
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, regularly attacks Ukrainian ports in its southwest region, close to the border with NATO member Romania.
This wouldn’t be the first time that explosives fired during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine have landed in foreign countries, including EU and NATO members.
In November 2022, NATO held crisis talks after a missile landed in Poland, though U.S. President Joe Biden later said it was unlikely to have been fired from Russia.
In September 2023, another Russian drone was found on Romanian soil near the Danube river, triggering fury from Romanian officials. Soon after, Bulgaria, also a NATO member, reported finding a kamikaze drone on its territory, but could not confirm its origins.
As a NATO member, Romania is protected under Article 5 of the military alliance’s treaties, which says that an attack on one member will be considered an attack on all members.
This story has been updated.
