Radio România Internațional

Tag: jet fighters

  • Russian drones crash in Romania

    Russian drones crash in Romania

    The Foreign Ministry in Bucharest is firmly condemning the latest irresponsible attack of the Russian troops, after two drones with explosive payloads have violated Romania’s airspace and crushed on its territory close to the border with Ukraine.

    Moscow’s charge D’affairs in Bucharest has been immediately summoned to the Foreign Ministry and has been briefed on the vehement condemnation of the repeated violation of Romania’s airspace by unmanned flying devices operated by the Russian military forces, which represent a blatant violation of the international law by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

    At the same time, the Romanian Foreign Ministry has underlined that these illegal and irresponsible attacks must stop, and that Romania has the right to take the response measures implied. These actions are an inseparable part of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, which has been carried on for almost three years and which has been causing security risks in the entire Black Sea region and the Eastern Flank of the North Atlantic Alliance, the aforementioned Ministry says.

    Four jet fighters took off from the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase on Wednesday night after several targets had been detected in Ukraine’s airspace close to Romania and a potential impact zone on the national territory close to the city of Galati, in eastern Romania, had been announced.

    In Romania a team of experts of the Romanian Defence and Interior Ministries on Thursday carried out a series of investigations close to the Romanian-Ukrainian border, where debris from the drone’s impact had been discovered.

    The investigation revealed that both drones had explosive payloads, which were destroyed in the impact. The two sites are outside the inhabited areas and no infrastructure elements have been affected, Defence Ministry sources have announced.

    Authorities in the neighbouring ex-soviet, Romanian-speaking, Republic of Moldova have also announced that two Russian drones violated the country’s airspace and exploded on the ground on Wednesday night, during a massive Russian attack against the port of Reni, in Ukraine. The two drones fell outside the inhabited areas. The two sites have been isolated and there is no threat to citizens presently, the country’s president, Maia Sandu, wrote on Facebook. In her post, she underlined that Russian drones and bombs are falling and exploding on Moldovan soil as the country lacks the necessary defence capabilities.

    The North Atlantic Alliance is close to the Republic of Moldova against the Kremlin’s destabilizing actions and terrorist acts, NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, said at the end of the Thursday’s meeting of the NATO defence ministers in Brussels. According to him, Moscow’s actions in the Republic of Moldova are quote a ‘campaign of destabilization and, at times, state-sponsored terrorism aimed at your country’.

    The aforementioned meeting came shortly after the US president Donald Trump announced he had commenced talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on putting an end to the war in Ukraine.

    (bill)

  • MApN dismantles Russia’s misinformation campaign

    MApN dismantles Russia’s misinformation campaign

    Romania’s Ministry of National Defence has denounced a new misinformation campaign concerning Romania. Russian journalists have this time tackled the drone attack on the night between January 16th and 17th the Russian forces launched against the civil infrastructure of Ukraine’s ports, close to its border with Romania.

    According to them, the attack was launched a day later, in the night between January 17th and 18th, allegedly against a convoy of Romanian troops or mercenaries trying to cross the Danube from Romania to Ukraine in their dinghies.

    According to the aforementioned Russian sources, ground military installations belonging to Romania’s armed forces would have opened fire against the flying drones. The same propaganda material says that the drone attack, which has been ordered by high-ranking Russian army officers, would have caused significant casualties among the Romanian troops.

    The Kremlin scenario also includes helicopter gunships belonging to the Romanian Air Force, involved in medevac operations and also supporting with fire the operation of the Ukrainian forces on the other bank of the river.

    The aforementioned propaganda material has triggered a prompt response from Bucharest.

    The Defence Ministry in Bucharest, also known as MApN, has described those presented by the Russian press as ‘absurdities without any real support’. The Ministry says that in the night between January 16th and 17th, the Romanian army’s monitoring and surveillance installations signaled a series of violations of Romania’s airspace, which imposed alerts issued for the residents of the Tulcea county and the activation of two F-16 jet fighters of the country’s air force.

    Later, experts with the MApN, the Romanian Intelligence Service and the Interior Ministry, have identified two areas in which parts of the Russian drones fell to the ground.

    The Romanian Defence Ministry says that although absurd and false, the information invented by Kremlin’s propaganda laboratories is in line with the pattern of the Russian operations aimed at influencing and manipulating the Romanian and allied public space.

    According to MApN, their objective is to create a false perception that NATO would try to join the war against Russia and that Romania is being pushed into this conflict.  The Romanian side says that this propaganda narrative is also targeting the Russians who are being manipulated into believing the myth of the besieged city, that Russia is in danger of being attacked by NATO, and that in Ukraine, the Russian invading troops are actually fighting NATO in the so-called ‘special military operation’

    According to Bucharest, the reality, which the Kremlin propaganda is trying to cover up, is that Russia, which completely disdains international norms, has militarized the Black Sea, invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2024, and since 2022 has been engaged in an illegal aggression war against a neighbouring sovereign country. Last, but not least, the Ministry says that it expects the false information presented in the aforementioned material to be taken over by the vectors of the Russian propaganda operating inside the Romanian public space and get hyped up mainly on digital platforms.

    (bill)