A Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Romania early Friday, injuring two people and setting the building ablaze, exactly the type of spillover from the war in Ukraine that many in Europe have long feared.
It was one of 232 drones and one ballistic missile launched by Russia against neighboring Ukraine, authorities there said, the latest nearly nightly attack against Ukraine’s power grid.
An unknown number of these drones crossed over into Romanian airspace, one of them hitting an apartment block in the border town of Galați, its government said.
“Russia’s reckless behavior is a danger to us all,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in a statement. “Last night showed yet again that the implications of their illegal war of aggression don’t stop at the border.”
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Unlike Ukraine, which is not in NATO, Romania is a member of the defense alliance.
Rutte said that “NATO stands ready to defend every inch of Allied territory,” a sentiment echoed by the U.S. ambassador to the alliance, Matthew Whitaker.
“We stand with our NATO ally Romania and condemn this reckless incursion on its territory,” he said in an online post. “Our thoughts are with the injured in Galati. We will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
NATO is built on the principle of mutual defense. Article 5 of its founding document says that an attack on one member should be treated as an attack on all, and that allies should respond appropriately.
The implication has always been that NATO members, underwritten by the most powerful member, the U.S., would come to the defense of European allies under attack. Despite Whitaker’s strong words, President Donald Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on this idea during his two presidential terms.
Asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was aware of the incident, his spokesman Dmitri Peskov replied sarcastically, “What do you think? We kept it a secret?” the state-owned news agency Tass reported.
Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Oana-Silvia Țoiu called it “a serious and irresponsible escalation by the Russian Federation” and a “serious violation of international law and of its airspace.”
Țoiu said Romania had summoned the Russian ambassador.
Ukraine said the incident was proof that “Russian aggression poses a real threat to the Black Sea region and the entire Europe,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a statement.
Its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack showed why it was “necessary to step up pressure on Russia, so that this war is not dragged out or expanded.” He said Ukraine was “ready to support Romania in whatever way is necessary under these circumstances.”
Meanwhile European Union President Ursula von der Leyen said that Russia’s “war of aggression has crossed yet another line.”
Like most nights, Russia had fired hundreds of drones at Ukraine late Thursday, with the Ukrainian military saying it detected 232 drones and one Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missile. Of these, Ukraine shot down 217 drones, but 14 of them — as well as the ballistic missile — got through and hit targets in Ukraine, it said.
Meanwhile, Romania radar detected multiple drones crossing into its airspace, the country’s Ministry of National Defense said in a statement. It scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and a helicopter at 1:19 a.m. (6:19 p.m. ET Thursday), with the aircraft having permission to shoot down the drones, it said.
One of the drones hit the roof of an apartment building in Galați, a town on the river Danube that separates Romania, Ukraine and Moldova.
Images backed up official statements that this caused a fire on the roof, with two people injured and needing medical treatment.
What worries officials and experts so much about this type of incident is that — whether deliberate or not — it risks dragging other countries, and potentially NATO, into the war.
Petr Pavel, president of Czechia, said that “mere condemnation” of Russia’s actions was not enough. He instead joined Romania in calling for “a strong international response,” writing on X, “Russia must clearly understand that we will not tolerate such attacks.”
This is not the first time Russia’s waves of drones, missiles and aircraft have entered other countries’ airspace, with Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Finland reporting dozens of such incidents since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
In 2024, Poland said a Russian cruise missile entered its airspace for 39 seconds, and the next year Estonia said three Russian MiG-31 fighter planes crossed over into its territory for around four minutes.
That one of these drones would sooner or later hit an inhabited area “was inevitable,” former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves told NBC News in a telephone interview Friday.
He said one explanation was that these drones had “gone off course,” but another was that this was an example of “Russia’s deniable ‘grey warfare.’” Experts say these hybrid tactics include cyber attacks, border incursions and sabotaging everything from undersea cables to civilian railways.
“It’s basically impossible to tell which it is at this point,” he said.
Whatever the intent, Ilves said he thinks “it’s time to take a firmer stand” against Russia. “I’m concerned that we’ve been doing so little in response, and I’m tired of this attitude, ‘Oh no, we can’t do anything because this might escalate,’ when in fact Ukraine has already been invaded.”
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