MOSCOW — The investigation into what struck a rooftop in Galati has not yet begun. That did not stop Romania from declaring a Russian diplomat persona non grata on Friday — and it did not stop Moscow from firing back on Saturday.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna, delivered the sharpest official Russian response yet to Bucharest’s handling of the incident, calling the accusations against Russia an exercise in what he described as “extremely primitive Russophobia.” Writing on X, Ulyanov said conclusions of the most serious kind had been reached without any consideration of evidence — or of Romania’s own credibility.
“Russia was accused of a drone attack in Romania even before any investigation has been conducted,” Ulyanov wrote Saturday. The Romanian authorities, he added, had shown a lack of respect “towards themselves and their own citizens.”
The origin of the drone remains officially unconfirmed. Romanian President Nicusor Dan said the unmanned aerial vehicle that struck a residential building in Galati early Friday was part of a group of 43 drones that had crossed Ukrainian territory north of the Danube. Romanian radar tracked it; Romanian air defenses did not intercept it. Two people were injured when it hit the roof of a house.
Within hours, Romania’s Defense Ministry had attributed the strike to Russia. By Friday evening, President Dan arrived in Galati by helicopter and announced that the Russian consul general in Constanta would be declared persona non grata and the consulate general would be closed — a diplomatic penalty that will outlast any investigation by months if not years. Romania’s decision to shut the Constanta consulate came before any forensic findings were made public.
Vladimir Putin, speaking from Kazakhstan where he had just completed a state visit, declined to endorse Bucharest’s version. He suggested the drone was more likely Ukrainian in origin — one that had gone off course because of electronic countermeasures or a guidance malfunction — and called for an “objective investigation.” That investigation has not been announced by either side as of Saturday morning. Eastern Herald reported on Thursday that Putin had already contested the attribution from Astana before Romania took the diplomatic step of expelling the consul.
NATO, for its part, was more definitive. A SHAPE representative told Reuters that the drone was of Russian origin. That determination appeared to rest on the same radar tracking data Romania had already disclosed publicly, though the alliance did not specify what additional evidence, if any, had been brought to bear.
For Romania, the Galati strike fits a pattern that Bucharest has been trying to draw international attention to for nearly three years. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, fragments of Russian military drones have landed on Romanian territory on multiple occasions. The country has previously protested violations of its airspace, scrambled F-16s, and summoned Russian ambassadors — each time with limited diplomatic consequence. This time, closing the Constanta consulate represents a more lasting break.
Whether that break accelerates the crisis or settles it depends on a question neither government has yet answered: what, exactly, hit that rooftop. Al Jazeera reported that the incident has deepened concern among NATO governments that Moscow’s war against Ukraine risks spilling beyond Ukraine’s borders to entangle neighboring alliance states — a concern that Friday’s events in Galati have sharpened, not resolved.
Romania’s response drew immediate support from NATO allies, several of whom issued statements condemning Russia and reaffirming Article 5 commitments. Italy separately announced it would deploy 100 troops and fighter jets to Romania in a training mission in the wake of the incident. None of those allied gestures change the evidentiary question at the center of the diplomatic rupture: the investigation that both Ulyanov and Putin demanded has not started.
Moscow’s broader argument — that any unidentified drone landing on EU soil is reflexively attributed to Russia without technical findings — is not new. The Russian embassy in Bucharest made effectively the same point in September 2025 after a separate airspace incident, describing a Romanian protest as without foundation in the absence of confirmed identification. What is new on Saturday is the rank of the official making the claim, and the sharpness of the word he chose: not a diplomatic protest, not a denial — but a charge of Russophobia leveled at a NATO government by a senior Russian envoy before a single forensic conclusion has been reached.
—Inputs from Sputnik.
