President of NATO-member Romania, Klaus Iohannis, said that the latest attacks on neighbour Ukraine happened “very close” to his country’s border, as Russia repeatedly launches drone raids on Danube infrastructure in southern Ukraine.
“We had attacks … which were verified at 800 metres [2,600 feet] from our border. So very, very close,” Iohannis told a joint news conference with Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel.
The NATO member nation refuted Kyiv’s claims on September 4 that an attack on the Ukrainian port of Izmail resulted in Iranian-made Russian drones falling and exploding on Romanian soil.
“There was no piece, and no drone and no other part of any device that made it to Romania,” Iohannis told the media on Tuesday, echoing comments Monday by the Defence Ministry.
“But yes, we are concerned because these attacks are taking place within a very short distance from the Romanian border,” Iohannis added, speaking from the Cincu military base in central Romania.
“But we are alert,” he said.
In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defence said that it was aiming at gasoline storage facilities in the Ukrainian port of Reni that were used to supply Ukraine’s armed forces. The attack was effective, the Russian statement continued, with “all assigned targets neutralised.”
The NATO member Romania issued a quick reprimand after the salvo crossed its border. The attack was denounced by Romania’s Ministry of Defence in “the strongest terms possible,” calling it “unjustified and in deep contradiction with rules of international humanitarian law.”
The Ministry said that there was no direct threat to Romanian territory or its territorial waters, CNN reported.
According to an assistant to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Kremlin intended for the strikes to spark a “food crisis” in the country.
“Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope that they will be able to provoke a food crisis and famine in the world,” the aide, Andriy Yermak, said on the messaging app Telegram.
The airstrikes that took place overnight are Moscow’s most recent attempt to attack Ukrainian shipping infrastructure since July, when Moscow backed out of an agreement that permitted Ukrainian ships to get around a Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports and safely navigate the waterway to Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait in order to access international markets.
The failure of the agreement raised food prices worldwide and stoked concerns that the world’s poorest nations would struggle to feed their populations.
The UN too has been seeking to revive the deal, CNN reported.
(with inputs from ANI)
