Russian drone strikes Galați apartment block, injuring two, as Romania closes Russia's Constanța consulate

A Russian drone crashed into the roof of a 10-story apartment block in the center of Galați, a Romanian city of about 200,000 people on the Danube near the Ukrainian border, at around 02:00 on Friday, May 29. Romania's defense ministry said the Geran-2 drone was tracked by radar after entering Romanian airspace during an overnight Russian attack on Ukrainian targets across the river border, and that it exploded on impact, tearing through a top-floor flat and starting a fire. A 14-year-old boy and his 53-year-old mother were taken to hospital, two more people were treated at the scene for panic attacks, and 70 residents were evacuated; Deputy Interior Minister Raed Arafat said the blast damaged two stairwells, an elevator shaft and five cars. Two Romanian F-16s scrambled from Fetești and a military helicopter were authorized to engage but held their fire over the populated city.

President Nicușor Dan convened an emergency meeting of the Supreme Council of National Defense and called the strike the most serious security incident on Romanian territory since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "We had a serious incident last night in which two Romanian citizens were injured, and full responsibility lies with Russia," he said, adding that the drone was one of a swarm of 43 launched at Ukraine, of which only one crossed into Romania. Dan announced that Russia's consul general in Constanța had been declared persona non grata and the consulate general there would be closed, leaving Moscow only its embassy in Bucharest. He also rebuked Romanian politicians who had tried to play down Russia's responsibility: "Romanian citizens can now see who is genuinely pro-Western and who is only pretending to be."

Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu called the strike "an unacceptable and blatant violation of our airspace" and said NATO's top commander, U.S. General Alexus Grynkewich, had agreed to Bucharest's earlier request to shift military equipment to Romania, which it now wanted accelerated; the foreign ministry said it would raise the incident under Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which obliges members to hold urgent consultations. Brigadier General Gheorghe Maxim told reporters the drone was in Romanian airspace for four minutes and flew low for about 10 kilometers, making it hard to track, and that the U.S. Merops anti-drone system deployed in Romania was not yet fully integrated with national air defenses and too risky to use over a city. Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said the government had asked NATO partners for radars able to detect low-flying drones.

Romania, a NATO member since 2004 that shares a 650-kilometer border with Ukraine, has logged Russian airspace breaches repeatedly since Moscow began striking the Ukrainian Danube ports of Reni and Izmail; the defense ministry said Friday it had recorded 28 breaches and 47 fallen drone fragments over four years. A drone carrying explosives crashed on the outskirts of Galați on April 25 without detonating, and a second drone without a warhead was found in the northwest near Baia Mare around the time of Friday's strike. It was the first time, however, that a drone had struck a densely populated area in a NATO country and caused injuries since the war began -- an escalation of a pattern that saw more than 20 Russian drones enter Polish airspace on September 9-10, 2025, after which both Poland and Estonia invoked Article 4.

Russia denied responsibility. Speaking on the sidelines of a Eurasian Economic Union summit, Putin said "no one can say what kind of drone it was until an investigation is completed," suggested the wreckage be handed to Moscow for its own inquiry, and claimed that "Ukrainian drones have flown into many places across Europe." Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, wrote that "the Euro-impotents are throwing a fit," argued that European states were "direct participants in the war against Russia," and warned that "this won't be the last time" and that Europeans "shouldn't be going to sleep expecting peaceful nights." Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the accusations as unsubstantiated and said Moscow would respond to the consulate closure.

European capitals responded in unison. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Russia's "war of aggression has crossed yet another line" and promised "full solidarity" with Romania; NATO's Mark Rutte, after a call with Dan, said the alliance was "ready to defend every inch of allied territory" and called Russia's behavior "a danger to us all," without mentioning the mutual-defense clause. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the incident showed "we need a strong NATO presence on the eastern flank," and France and Austria each summoned Russia's ambassador; French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot condemned an "irresponsible act" against "a country of the European Union and a NATO country," while Austria's Beate Meinl-Reisinger said "Europe will not be intimidated." Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the strike proved Russian aggression threatened the whole Black Sea region, and President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was ready to help Romania "in whatever way is necessary."

The strike landed amid an intensifying Russian air campaign: drones hit the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail, across the river from Galați, overnight, briefly cutting power to five villages, and it followed a May 27 strike on Odesa that wounded 11 people, including two children. A day earlier, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had told the Security Council that more civilians were killed in Ukraine in the first four months of 2026 than in the same period of any of the previous three years, and called for "a full and unconditional ceasefire."