Russian drone crash in Romania: NATO still seeks defense systems adapted to drone incursions

Residents of the Romanian city of Galati were woken up by an emergency alert on their phones in the middle of the night on Friday, May 29. Some then heard the sound of a drone's motor, as it flew over the city of 217,000 inhabitants located on the banks of the Danube, near Ukraine. The device crashed into the roof of a 10-story building and exploded, starting a fire in one of the apartments. Two people, a 14-year-old teenager and his mother, were slightly injured, and 70 residents were evacuated. In Romania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, such an incident had been feared from the moment, in 2023, when Russia began to attack Ukrainian ports along the Danube. Since then, there have been 28 drone incursions into Romanian airspace, 15 of which occurred in 2026. On April 25, an explosive-armed drone fell on a workshop in Galati without detonating, prompting the evacuation of over 200 people. The Friday incursion marked the first time that a drone, which was identified as a Russian-made Geran-2 model, crashed into a residential building and directly injured Romanian civilians. You have 86.89% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.