\n It was two o\u2019clock in the morning when the explosion hit \u2014 a Russian drone smashing into the tenth floor of an apartment block in the Romanian town of Galati, just 11 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and a military helicopter, while emergency alerts were sent to residents across the affected region. Two people were injured and the apartment building was swiftly evacuated. The incident has sparked condemnation across NATO capitals and raised fresh concerns about the growing risks along the alliance\u2019s eastern flank. <\/p>\n
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that \u201cPutin has crossed another line,\u201d while NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the strike as \u201creckless behaviour\u201d and \u201ca danger to us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romania\u2019s interim Chief of Defence Staff, General Gheorghe Maxim, said the drone strike in Galati was not \u201can attack from Russia against Romania,\u201d but warned that \u201cRomanians should understand that Russia is a threat to the security of the countries in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romanian President Nicusor Dan also reacted strongly to the incident, as pressure mounts on NATO to respond to an increasingly volatile security situation near its borders.<\/p>\n
To discuss more, FRANCE 24\u2019s Gavin Lee is joined by Romania\u2019s Foreign Minister.<\/p>\n
Produced by Gavin Lee, Th\u00e9ophille Vareille, Emmanuel Miculita,\u00a0Guillaume Gougeon and\u00a0Alessandro Xenos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was two o\u2019clock in the morning when the explosion hit \u2014 a Russian drone smashing into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":993538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2595,2000,299,36,2821,1438,332,32744,1220,333,658],"class_list":["post-993537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-drones","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-nato","tag-romania","tag-russia","tag-spotlight","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelensky"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116661399202905539","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993537","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=993537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}