A drone of Russian origin crashed early this Friday into an apartment block in the city of Galați, eastern Romania, causing a fire and minor injuries to two residents. The Ministry of Defense of the country, a member of NATO, confirmed the event, which marks a worrying escalation, as it is the first time in the more than four years of conflict in which citizens of the country have been directly injured by this type of incursions. Repeated airspace violations are one thing, and innocent people paying in an urban environment are another.
According to Romania’s General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations, the drone was carrying a complete explosive charge that detonated upon impact, on the top floor of the building. The crash occurred directly on the roof or terrace and seriously affected the tenth floor of the apartment block, unleashing a fire that forced firefighters to emergency evacuate about 70 people, Reuters reports. “Residents remain evacuated until technicians complete inspections, including the structure of the building,” the head of the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), Raed Arafat, told the portal. digi24.ro.
Medical services treated two people at the scene who had minor abrasions and injuries caused by the incident. His life is not in danger.
The Romanian Ministry of Defense detailed that its radar systems detected the incursion of drones into its airspace while Russian forces carried out a night offensive against Ukrainian border infrastructure (such as the port of Izmail, in the Odessa region). The UAV was apparently in Romania for about four minutes.
Given the alert, it deployed two F-16 model fighter planes to monitor the situation, tracking the projectile until it finally fell in the southern area of Galați. “The pilots of the aircraft had authorization to attack targets throughout the alert period,” the ministry added, according to EFE.
A Romanian Air Force helicopter supported the operations, while a team of investigators specialized in explosions went to the scene.
At the diplomatic level, the Romanian Foreign Ministry reported this morning that it has called the Russian ambassador for consultations to show its displeasure over what happened. Romanian President Nicușor Daniel Dan has said the “unprecedented nature” of the drone incident requires a “coordinated response” at the national and international levels.
European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen has declared that Russia had “crossed another red line” by injuring civilians. “We stand in full solidarity with Romania and its people,” von der Leyen said in a post on X. “As we continue to strengthen our security and deterrence, especially on our eastern border, we will continue to increase pressure on Russia.”
“We stand in full solidarity with Romania and its people,” von der Leyen said in a post on X. “As we continue to strengthen our security and deterrence, especially on our eastern border, we will continue to increase pressure on Russia.”
Repeated airspace violations
Although it is the first time that personal injuries have been reported, Galați, on the banks of the Danube, had already suffered material consequences from a similar impact last April. The Romanian authorities reported that, since the beginning of the large-scale invasion ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in February 2022, drone fragments have been located in national territory on 47 different occasions, 12 of them documented so far this year in 2026. Their position, near the borders with the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, significantly exposes it.
And it goes beyond Romania: there have been two deaths in Poland, in 2022, in addition to countless violations of airspace in that EU country or in the three Baltics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This same week, Von der Leyen was in the area to promise more help to their governments and more coordination with NATO to protect them.
So far, the Kremlin has not issued any official statement regarding this latest incident. In parallel, anti-aircraft alarms sounded throughout Ukraine during the night, and cross attacks were also recorded in occupied regions of Donetsk that caused civilian casualties. kyiv says that Moscow has launched a missile and more than 230 drones at them in the last few hours and that more than 215 have been shot down. There is still no data on victims and damages, in the week in which the largest attack on civilians in this “special military operation”, as Putin calls it, has also been recorded.
