(Reuters) – Russian air strikes took place less than one kilometre from Romania’s border with Ukraine on Tuesday, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said, amid intense attacks on the Ukrainian port of Izmail.
Iohannis was speaking a day after Kyiv said Russian drones had detonated on Romanian territory, a claim Bucharest denied.
“We had attacks just today, the minister of defence told me, which were verified at 800 metres from our border. So very, very close,” said Iohannis, speaking in a joint press conference with Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel.
“I can tell you no piece, no drone and no part of a device landed in Romania,” he added, according to a translation from Romanian broadcaster Digi TV.
Moscow has mounted long-range air strikes on targets in Ukraine since the start of its invasion last year. Since July, when Moscow abandoned a deal that lifted a de facto Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, it has repeatedly struck Ukrainian river ports that lie across the Danube from Romania.
Ukraine has reported suspected Russian weapons flying over or crashing into neighbours, including NATO members, several times during the war.
In the most serious incident, two people were killed in Poland by a missile that fell near the border last November. Poland and NATO allies later said it was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
