38-year-old Andra Lupsa did exactly that on Thursday evening, but was still awakened. Her husband left the phone on and it started ringing an hour after midnight.
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“I grumbled to myself: another warning,” the woman recalled. “And I put my head back on the pillow.”
A few moments later she heard a powerful crash. A Russian drone hit a nearby apartment building in the city of Galați, one of the largest in eastern Romania.
“You keep telling yourself it’s just another warning, you say nothing like this can happen here,” Andra said on Saturday.
For Andra, her neighbors, Romanian government and NATO officials, of which the country is a member, it is hard to comprehend how what was an annoying routine suddenly became a potentially deadly threat.
Russian drones regularly attack Ukrainian ports and other targets along the Danube River, which winds between Romania and Ukraine. Debris often falls into small Romanian villages.
But until early Friday morning, a drone had never crashed into a residential building on NATO territory.
The drone crashed into the elevator shaft on the roof. The explosion following the impact blew a hole in the ceiling of an apartment on the 10th floor, where a 53-year-old woman and her 14-year-old son were sleeping. They were unharmed by the initial blast but suffered serious burns while fleeing through the burning debris in the living room. The force of the explosion also shattered the windows of the upper floors of the building.
When the fire broke out, residents were ordered to evacuate, but by Saturday most had already returned home. While police officers stood guard to prevent anyone but residents and workers from entering, construction workers were still clearing debris and repairing damage on the upper floors of the apartment building.
Although the physical damage is quickly being repaired, the shock remains. A troubling question hangs over Romania: was this an accident caused by a Russian drone veering off course due to Ukrainian air defense systems? Or was it a deliberate strike aimed at testing NATO’s defense and its response to incursions into Alliance territory?
Romanian President Nicușor Dan, speaking in Galați on Friday, left no room for ambiguity: the drone hit by mistake.
After visiting the hospital where the mother and son injured in the attack are being treated, the president told television that the aircraft belonged to the 43rd Russian drone squadron flying over Ukraine from the east. Some drones were shot down, he emphasized.
However, one of them was damaged by Ukrainian air defense forces over the Danube port city of Reni on the Ukrainian side, and its trajectory changed. The aircraft veered toward Galați, just 14.5 km away, and struck the city, explained N. Dan.
The situation resembles what has happened in the Baltic region in recent weeks, hundreds of kilometers to the north. Here, Russian air defense and electronic jamming systems have repeatedly altered the course of Ukrainian drones headed toward Russia. Diverted from their course, drones have strayed into Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, causing alarm but no serious damage or casualties.
However, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, hinted at a more threatening scenario, stating on Friday that Russia might take deliberate action in retaliation for Western support to Ukraine.
D. Medvedev, who enjoys stoking panic to reduce support for Ukraine, wrote on social media that citizens of European Union countries are paying the price for their leaders “unilaterally starting a war with Russia.”
“Be alert and expect the unexpected,” he warned. “You will no longer sleep peacefully.”
Ionutas Oanea, 39, father of two girls living in Galați near the site hit by the drone, admitted on Saturday he was still trying to understand what happened. Early Friday, he was woken from bed by frightened daughters and phone alerts. Awakened, he could not fall back asleep and got out of bed. Then, he said, he looked out the window and saw fighter jets scrambled by Romania after detecting drones in its airspace.
“Two F-16 fighters flew over us,” Ionutas said. “I saw them flying, heard their roar, saw their lights. And then I heard the drone.”
“It was so close I couldn’t tell if it was above me or beside me,” the man said.
According to him, he started shouting to his wife still lying in bed: “Drone! Drone!”
“I heard the drone. Then there was a loud explosion,” he recalled. “I panicked.”
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This article was published in The New York Times.
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