BUCHAREST, March 12 (Reuters) – The presidents of Romania and Ukraine signed a statement of intent on Thursday to produce Ukrainian defence systems including drones \u200cin Romania, they said after a meeting in Bucharest.<\/p>\n
Romania, an EU and \u200cNATO member, shares a 650-km (400-mile) border with Ukraine, including along the Danube River where Ukrainian ports on \u200bthe opposite bank have come under Russian attack and Russian drones have breached Romanian airspace.<\/p>\n
After four years of fending off Russia’s assaults, Ukraine says it has developed drone and counter-drone systems that can help protect NATO countries.<\/p>\n
A statement signed by the two presidents \u200csaid they had agreed to “enable \u2060the production of Ukrainian defence systems and capabilities in Romania with the purpose of strengthening the defence industries of Ukraine and Romania.”<\/p>\n
Last \u2060year, Romanian officials said they aimed to partner with Ukraine in building drones under a new EU defence funding mechanism, SAFE.<\/p>\n
“We talked about our military cooperation and one of \u200bthe documents \u200bwe signed also includes cooperating on drone \u200bproduction,” said Romania’s President Nicusor Dan, \u200ca centrist who last year defeated a right-wing candidate sceptical of close ties to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s expertise lay particularly in integrating drone software into a country’s wider defense system.<\/p>\n
He said they discussed energy, including the prospect of Ukraine importing U.S. liquefied natural gas through pipelines across Romania, and cooperating on energy projects \u200cin the Black Sea.<\/p>\n
The two presidents signed \u200ba document promoting partnership in areas ranging from defence \u200bto minority rights, and a \u200bseparate document regarding energy cooperation.<\/p>\n
Dan said Romania would support any legal \u200cmeans of unblocking EU aid to Ukraine \u200bthat has been \u200bvetoed by Hungary.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy later posted video and pictures on Telegram showing him touring a facility in Romania where Ukrainian pilots undergo training to operate F-16 fighter \u200baircraft.<\/p>\n
He thanked the United \u200cStates and Romania and other countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, \u200bfor making the aircraft available to strengthen Ukrainian defences.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie, \u200bEditing by Ron Popeski and Cynthia Osterman)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUCHAREST, March 12 (Reuters) – The presidents of Romania and Ukraine signed a statement of intent on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7654],"tags":[236478,152049,2000,299,1438,657,43717],"class_list":["post-821765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ukraine","tag-defence-industries","tag-defence-systems","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-romania","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian-president"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116218842788049564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}