The radar surveillance system of the Romanian Army identified potential unauthorised access into its national airspace on Friday night, prompting alerts to citizens near the Ukrainian border about potential falling aerial objects.
The National Committee for Emergency Situations disseminated RO-Alert messages to Romanian residents in the Galați and Tulcea counties, advising them to seek shelter and, if not possible, to stay away from open areas exposed to winds on Friday night.
Defence Ministry spokesperson Constantin Spînu said a group of drones was tracked heading towards Galați on Friday night. This marks the first instance of a potential aerial threat indicated concerning a major city; Galați is a significant Romanian port home to approximately 270,000 residents.
Claudiu Sorin Gavril, the prefect of Galați County, urged citizens to remain calm, assuring them that police units monitored the area. On a 10-kilometre search near Galați, no suspicious object was found, informed the Ministry of Defence in a press release on Saturday.
In response to the heightened security concerns, Romania has reportedly bolstered its air defence systems in villages along the Danube and increased the presence of military observation posts and patrols in the area, a senior defence official from the Ministry of Defence told Reuters.
Apprehensions have escalated since the beginning of September when drone debris was discovered in the village of Plauru and its vicinity. At that time, President Klaus Iohannis notified the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, about the “new development” at the Eastern NATO border, condemning what he characterised as “the incident caused by the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian ports on the Danube.”
(Manuela Preoteasa, Sebastian Rotaru | Euractiv.ro)
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