A Ukrainian sea attack drone “self detonated” in the Romanian port of Constanta on Friday morning, prompting a major evacuation of Black Sea beaches as three other bomb boats were out of control and unaccounted for.
A group of Ukrainian suicide attack boat drones — the kind used to great effect against Russian warships in the Black Sea in the course of the Ukraine War — were apparently sent off course by electronic warfare and ended up at the port city of Constanta, Romania, on Friday morning. Romanian authorities were initially aware of one of the bomb boats which they attempted to disarm, but this failed and the craft apparently automatically “self-detonated”.
A statement by the Romanian government stated after identifying they had a Ukrainian suicide boat in their port, they contacted Kyiv which informed Bucharest that they had in fact lost contact with four of their bomb boats. An attempt to disarm the drone was made but this failed. The Romanian Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Defence, and the Coast Guard had already secured the area in the port of Constanta around the boat and evacuated, and when the large explosion took place — apparently destroying a wharf side building — there were no casualties.
A hunt by helicopter for the three other drones took place and over 1,000 people were evacuated from Romania’s Black Sea beaches, in case any of the boats drifted onto the shore. In the end the three other boats also self-destructed, one close to the port and two more offshore. It is not unknown for weapons systems to have self-destruct features to prevent intact examples falling into the hands of enemy engineers.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian government said the boat drone that exploded in the Romanian port had lost control because of Russian electronic warfare — a well established facet of the conflict, where both sides attempt to disable or misdirect each other’s guided weapons by blocking or spoofing radio traffic, or otherwise confusing the weapons — and that Kyiv had cooperated with Romania to prevent a loss of life. They said: “This incident shows once again that Russia’s ongoing full-scale aggression poses a threat not only to Ukraine, but to the entire region. Effective coordination is key to mitigate its consequences to neighbouring countries.”
Romania also made clear that it blamed Russia for the Ukrainian drone having got lost before exploding in its territory. President Nicușor Dan said: “The entry of this drone into Romanian sovereign space represents a direct consequence of the war waged by Russia against Ukraine.
Russia denied responsibility.
That electronic warfare works both ways, and just last week it was a Russian attack drone that exploded in Romania, again presumably because it became lost after being misdirected. The drone flew into the side of an apartment block and exploded, but there were no fatalities.
Romania has been repeatedly on the front line of these lost munitions over the course of the war, and in no small part because its border with Ukraine takes the form of the Danube river, which is strategically and economically important to Ukraine’s war effort, leading to it becoming a regular target for Russian attacks. As previously reported:
Previous Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa and other cities up the Danube have come so close to the Romanian frontier that Romanian troops have observed drones landing on targets just 200 yards away from their positions. Romanian border villagers close to Galati, the scene of Thursday night’s attack, have already received new-built emergency bomb shelters from the Romanian military, so frequent is it that attacks land close to the border.
The sea drones that exploded in Romanian waters today are reported to be of the Magura V5, which have already been proven in combat and are said to have been behind the sinking of Russian missile corvette Ivanovets at sea. Another alleged Magura V5 turned up lost in Greece in the Ionian Sea last month, a considerable distance from home. Ukraine denied the explosives-laden boat was theirs.
Read the full article here