Romania Says Russian Drone Hit Building on Its Territory
Emergency officials said two people suffered abrasions and needed medical treatment, while firefighters succeeded in bringing the blaze under control.
A Russian drone smashed into an apartment building in Romania, a NATO member, injuring two people in a city close to the Ukrainian border, the country’s defence ministry said.
“During the night of 28 – 29 May, the Russian Federation resumed drone attacks on civilian and infrastructure targets in Ukraine, near the river border with Romania,” the Romanian defence ministry said.
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“One of these drones entered Romanian airspace, was tracked by radar as far as the southern part of the city of Galati, and crashed onto the roof of an apartment building, with the impact triggering a fire,” it said.
Emergency officials said two people suffered abrasions and needed medical treatment, while firefighters succeeded in bringing the blaze under control.
Images released from the scene showed firefighters working amid wreckage, with debris strewn across the ground.
Authorities said the drone’s full explosive payload detonated and about 70 residents were evacuated.
They said the fire was eventually extinguished.
Burned cars sit beside a store building wrecked in a Russian drone strike in Odesa, Ukraine
Drone breaches have been recorded dozens of times since Russia launched its full-scale offensive against Ukraine in 2022, but officials said this was the first incident in which one struck a residential building.
The ministry said two F-16 fighter jets were sent up after the drones were detected in Romanian airspace.
At the same time, local authorities in southern Ukraine said the port of Izmail in the Odesa region was targeted by several drones.
Izmail, near the Romanian frontier, hosts Ukraine’s largest port on the Danube River and has repeatedly come under attack because of its strategic importance.
Elsewhere, a Ukrainian drone strike killed three utility workers in a Russian-controlled area of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the Kremlin-installed head of the territory said.
Writing on Telegram, Denis Pushilin said the men, part of a repair team for the water supply company, were travelling in a car in Vuhlehirsk, north of Donetsk city, when drones hit the vehicle.
A fourth man was seriously injured in the attack.
Mr Pushilin said four other people were wounded in separate incidents in Russian-held parts of the region.
Soldiers build defensive fortifications in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine
Russia has pressed Ukraine to give up the parts of the Donetsk region it still controls and has said it is ready to continue fighting until it takes the entire territory.
Ukraine has rejected that demand.
Mr Pushilin said in March that Ukrainian forces still held as much as 17% of the region.
Russian troops have inched forward across Donetsk, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials have said Kyiv’s forces have regained ground and are now in their strongest position for months along the 1,200km front line.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said yesterday that its troops had seized the village of Novovasylivka in the Kharkiv region farther north, where Moscow says it is seeking to create a buffer zone along the border.
In Russia’s central Volgograd region, governor Andrei Bocharov, quoted by Russian news agencies, said air-defence units were fending off a massive drone assault.
An apartment building was struck and energy and civil infrastructurewas targeted, but no casualties were reported.
