Parts of what could be a Russian drone fell on Romanian territory, Romania’s Defense Minister Angel Tilvar said on Wednesday, two days after Ukraine said Russian drones had detonated on the NATO member’s land.
Romanian officials had earlier denied reports of drones falling on Romanian territory and said Russian attacks in neighboring Ukraine did not cause a direct threat.
On Wednesday, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said confirmation of the discovered parts belonging to a Russian drone would be a serious violation.
“I confirm that pieces which might be the elements of a drone were found,” Tilvar told Antenna 3 CNN broadcaster.
He said the area had not been evacuated because there was nothing to suggest that the parts posed a threat and said the pieces would be analyzed to confirm their origin.
Kyiv had said on Monday that drones detonated in Romania during an overnight Russian air strike on a Ukrainian port across the Danube River, where attacks have increased since July, when Moscow abandoned a deal that lifted a de facto Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
Speaking in Bucharest on Wednesday at the start of a summit of the presidents of Three Seas Initiative countries, Iohannis said the attacks were war crimes happening a “small distance” from Romania’s border.
“If it is confirmed that the components (found) belong to a Russian drone, such a situation would be inadmissible and a serious violation of Romania’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.
“We are on alert and in constant contact with our NATO allies,” he added.
Tilvar reiterated there was no direct threat and told Agerpres it was possible the drone did not explode upon impact but rather it simply fell or pieces landed on Romanian territory.
“(That) does not make us happy, (…) but I don’t think that we can talk about an attack and, as I said before, I think we need to know how to distinguish between an act of aggression and an incident,” Agerpres quoted him as saying.
A ministry spokesperson said search teams had been in the area for several days while the minister and other defense officials talked to residents.
Moscow has conducted long-range air strikes on targets in Ukraine since the start of the war last year, and Ukraine has reported suspected Russian weapons flying over or crashing into neighbors several times.
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 defense missile.
President Emmanuel Macron was in Bangladesh on Monday in a bid to “consolidate” France’s Indo-Pacific strategy and counterbalance a “new imperialism” in a region where China’s influence is increasingly being extended.
“Based on democratic principles and the rule of law, in a region facing new imperialism, we want to propose a third way — with no intention to bully our partners or to lead them to an unsustainable scheme,” Macron told Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, speaking in English.
The United States and China are competing for influence in the wider region, and Macron has pushed France as offering an alternative, said AFP.
“Bangladesh is progressively retrieving its place on the world stage,” Macron said, speaking after he arrived in the capital Dhaka on Sunday after the G20 leaders summit in neighboring India wrapped up.
He praised what he called “the tremendous success” of the South Asian country, a rapidly growing economy and the world’s eighth most populous nation with more than 170 million people.
Macron on Monday is set to hold talks with Hasina as well as visit a memorial to her father, Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, before returning to Paris.
Hasina said Macron’s “push for strategic autonomy aligns with our own foreign policy”, speaking at a dinner to welcome him. “We find you to be a breath of fresh air in international politics”.
Several Western governments have expressed concern over the political climate in Bangladesh ahead of general elections due before the end of January, where the ruling party dominates the legislature and runs it virtually as a rubber stamp.
The visit to Dhaka will also be “an opportunity to deepen the bilateral relationship with a country which is experiencing rapid economic development… and which seeks to diversify its partnerships”, the president’s Elysee Palace office said.
Macron’s visit follows a Pacific trip in July to the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, as well as a stopover in Sri Lanka, in which he outlined his Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at “recommitting” France to the region.
On Sunday, Macron met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 in New Delhi, who he hosted in Paris in July.
The French presidency suggested that Macron in the past six months had “done more about South Asia than in the space of a decade”.
The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency on Sunday said that Israel is prepared to strike “in the heart of Tehran” to track down the perpetrators of what he said were over two dozen Iranian attempts to hit Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.
Speaking at a security conference, David Barnea said that Israel and its allies had foiled 27 attacks over the past year in Europe, Africa, southeast Asia and South America.
“The plots being pursued by these teams were orchestrated, masterminded and directed by Iran,” Barnea told the conference at Reichman University. He added that “as we speak” Iran is trying to carry out additional attacks.
“Our message is loud and clear and determined,” he said. “Make no mistake, those of you who decided to dispatch the teams. Be assured that we will get to you, and justice will be done for all to see. This has been proven in the past, and in the future, we will ramp it up to the next level.”
Barnea said Israel would go after the agents involved in the plots as well as the commanders who sent them. “These prices will be exacted deep inside Iran, in the heart of Tehran,” he said.
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy, citing Iran’s calls for Israel’s destruction and its support for hostile militant groups on Israel’s borders. Israel also accuses Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapon — a charge Iran denies.
Niger’s junta on Sunday accused France of deploying troops in several West African countries as part of preparations for a possible military intervention together with the regional bloc ECOWAS in Niger.
In a communique read on state television overnight, the junta also repeated its call for the departure of French troops from its territory – a major source of tension between the one-time allies since the July 26 ouster of president Mohamed Bazoum.
The statement appealed to “national and international opinion to witness the consequences of this aggressive, underhanded and contemptuous attitude adopted by France.”
Relations between Niger and its former colonizer France have soured since Paris declared the junta illegitimate.
Ethiopia said on Sunday it had completed the fourth and final phase of filling a reservoir for its planned massive hydroelectric power plant on the Blue Nile, a project that Egypt and Sudan have long opposed.
Construction of the $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) began in 2011 and Ethiopia sees the project as crucial to powering its economic development.
Egypt and Sudan, however, consider the project a serious threat to their vital water supplies.
“Congratulations to all on the fourth filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Our national perseverance against all odds has delivered,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday.
With a projected capacity of more than 6,000 megawatts, Ethiopia sees GERD as the centerpiece of its bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.
The three countries have been in protracted negotiations over the project.
In a sign of a potential breakthrough in July, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Abiy agreed on plans to finalize an agreement between the three countries on the filling of the dam and the rules for its operation.
Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday and discussed whether Yaron would consider a second term, the central bank said, with both sides agreeing to decide after the Jewish high holidays next month.
Yaron, whose five-year term ends in December, also urged the prime minister to seek a broad public consensus of the government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, to preserve the country’s strong economy.
The high holiday season this year is Sept. 16 to Oct. 7.
The central bank declined to comment when asked whether Netanyahu had asked Yaron to stay for a second term. Netanyahu’s office also did not comment.
Yaron, an Israeli-born US finance professor, who was nominated by Netanyahu in 2018, has been critical of the economic impact of a plan by Netanyahu’s government to limit the powers of the Supreme Court.
The issue of whether Yaron will seek, or be reappointed for a second term, has loomed over financial markets for months.
“Whoever is the governor has to continue to be independent and to express the professional opinion in matters concerning the Israeli economy,” Yaron said in an interview with Reuters last week. “And that such a position provides confidence to the markets.”
Yaron said the last five years have been “one of the most challenging” for any Israeli central banker, citing five election cycles, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine-Russia war, inflation and the government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary that has sparked mass protests and polarised the Israeli public, Reuters reported.
Israeli media have also reported that Netanyahu has already reached out to a number of US academics to succeed Yaron.
Policymakers last week held the benchmark interest rate at 4.75% for a second straight time after having raised 10 times from 0.1% since April 2022 to tame inflation. Yaron fought off criticism and potential legislation from lawmakers over steep rate increases that have boosted bank profits and harmed mortgage holders, while banks were slow to pass on higher rates to savings accounts.
Russia launched an air attack on Kyiv early on Sunday, with blasts ringing out across the Ukrainian capital and its region for almost two hours and drone debris falling on several of the city’s central districts, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine’s Land Forces said that the country’s air defense systems destroyed 25 out of 32 Russia-launched Iran-made Shahed drones, most of which targeted Kyiv and the Kyiv region.
Reuters witnesses heard at least five blasts across Kyiv, and Ukrainian media footage showed a number of cars damaged.
“Drones came onto the capital in groups and from different directions,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that one person was injured in the historic Podil neighburhood and a fire broke out near one of the city’s parks.
Debris from downed drones fell on the Darnytskyi, Solomianskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, Sviatoshynskyi and Podil districts, Klitschko and the city’s military administration said.
In the Shevchenkivskyi district, drone debris sparked a fire in an apartment, which was quickly extinguished. There were no immediate reports of injuries, Popko said on the Telegram messaging app.
There was no immediate comment from Russia about the attacks. Moscow has been conducting near-nightly assaults on Ukraine’s territory. A Russian attack killed 17 on Wednesday in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka, according to Ukrainian officials.
New fragments of a drone similar to those used by the Russian military were found on Romanian soil, the defense ministry said on Saturday, and President Klaus Iohannis said this indicated an unacceptable breach of Romania’s air space had occurred.
In a statement, Iohannis said he had informed NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg about the pieces of drone – the second to crash in Romanian territory this week – and that Stoltenberg reiterated the alliance’s complete solidarity with Romania.
“The identification by Romanian authorities on Romanian territory near the border with Ukraine of new drone fragments … indicates an unacceptable breach occurred of the air space of Romania, a NATO state, with real risks to the security of Romanian citizens in the area,” Iohannis said.
“I firmly condemn this incident caused by Russian attacks on Ukrainian Danube river ports.”
The attacks on Ukraine’s river ports, just hundreds of meters from the Romanian border, have increased security risks for NATO whose members have a mutual defense commitment.
The US State Department said earlier this week it would rotate additional US F-16 fighter jets to bolster NATO’s air policing mission in Romania.
The defense ministry said Romania’s Naval Forces deployed search teams after local authorities alerted them to suspected drone fragments discovered 2.5 km southeast of the village of Plauru, across the Danube from the Ukrainian port of Izmail.
The military has secured the area and the fragments will be analyzed, it said in a statement.
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 is one of the world’s biggest grain exporters and Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta is now its largest alternative export route, with grains arriving by road, rail or barge across the Danube.
Ukraine had said on Monday that drones detonated in Romania during an overnight Russian air strike on Ukraine’s Izmail, but Romanian officials initially denied the reports before finding fragments on Wednesday.
Russia said on Saturday it was sticking to its conditions for a return to the Black Sea grain deal which it quit in July.
In particular, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia needed its state agricultural bank – and not a subsidiary of the bank, as proposed by the United Nations – to be reconnected to the international SWIFT bank payments system.
“All our conditions are perfectly well known. They do not need interpretation, they are absolutely concrete and all this is absolutely achievable,” Peskov said.
“Therefore, Russia maintains its responsible, clear and consistent position, which has been repeatedly voiced by the president.”
The Black Sea deal was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022 to enable Ukraine to export grain by sea despite the war and help ease a global food crisis.
It was accompanied by an agreement to facilitate Russia’s own exports of food and fertilizer, which Moscow says has not been fulfilled. Since quitting the grain deal, Russia has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian ports and grain stores, prompting Kyiv and the West to accuse it of using food as a weapon.
Moscow’s uncompromising restatement of its position came five days after President Vladimir Putin met his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and discussed the grain issue.
Russia appears to have drawn encouragement from Erdogan’s statement at that meeting that Ukraine should “soften its approaches” in talks over reviving the deal, and export more grain to Africa rather than Europe. Ukraine said it would not alter its stand and would not be hostage to “Russian blackmail”.
Russia says its grain and fertilizer exports, though not specifically sanctioned by the West, face barriers in practice because of sanctions affecting port access, insurance, logistics and payments – including the removal of agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank from SWIFT.
The UN has proposed that a Luxembourg-based subsidiary of Rosselkhozbank could immediately apply to SWIFT to “effectively enable access” for the bank within 30 days.
“The agreements say that SWIFT should be open to Rosselkhozbank, and not to its subsidiary. That is, we are talking about the need to return to the basics, to the agreements that were in place originally and which we were promised would be fulfilled,” Peskov said.
“The president clearly said that the moment they are fulfilled, then the deal will immediately resume. But not vice versa,” he added.
The United Nations atomic watchdog warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety due to a spike in fighting near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine as the forces of the war-torn country continued pressing their counteroffensive on Saturday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said its experts deployed at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant reported hearing numerous explosions over the past week, in a possible indication of increased military activity in the region. There was no damage to the plant.
“I remain deeply concerned about the possible dangers facing the plant at this time of heightened military tension in the region,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned in a statement issued late Friday.
He noted that the IAEA team was informed that staff at the nuclear power plant had been reduced temporarily to minimum levels due to concerns of more military activity in the area.
“Whatever happens in a conflict zone, wherever it may be, everybody would stand to lose from a nuclear accident, and I urge that all necessary precautions must be taken to avoid it happening,” Grossi said.
The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern that the fighting could cause a potential radiation leak from the facility, which is one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations. The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.
As Ukrainian forces pressed to expand their gains after recently capturing the village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region, the UK Defense Ministry noted in its latest report that Russia has brought in reinforcements to stymie the Ukrainian advances.
“It is highly likely that Russia has redeployed forces from other areas of the frontline to replace degraded units around Robotyne,” it said. “These redeployments are likely limiting Russia’s ability to carry out offensive operations of its own along other areas of the front line.”
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted that the Russian military has made notable changes to its command and control structure to “protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing.”
Russian forces have continued their barrage across Ukraine. The regional authorities in the northeastern region of Sumy that borders Russia said that the latest Russian shelling of the region has left four people wounded, one of whom later died in a hospital.
A month after a ferocious fire razed a town in Maui, 66 people remained unaccounted for as workers continued to remove toxic debris from the burn site, a process that could take almost a year, Hawaii Governor Josh Green said on Friday.
The official death toll of the Aug. 8 fire that left the historic town of Lahaina in charred ruins still stands at 115 people, a number unchanged in more than two weeks.
Only 60 of those victims had been identified as of Thursday, according to the Maui Police Department.
Officials have said some victims may have been cremated in the blaze, leaving no remains to recover; a final death toll is uncertain, as is the future of the land where Lahaina stood.
Earlier in September, county and federal officials circulated a list of more than 380 people still unaccounted for; by Friday, the list had been reduced to 66 people, the governor said in remarks broadcast online.
While some families wait in limbo, relatives of those confirmed dead face additional difficulties.
Tim Laborte’s stepfather, Joseph Lara, was killed in the fire, his body found a short drive from Lara’s house in his native Lahaina. Now the family are trying to piece together whether a mortgage is owed on Lara’s ruined property and what kind of insurance polices he held.
“His affairs are a mess,” Laborte said. “He didn’t have a will, he didn’t have a trust.”
The family have tried to get Lara’s remains released from a temporary morgue, but Laborte said they had been told that none would be released until officials were sure the burn area had been cleared of all human remains, and that obtaining a death certificate could take months.
Hawaii’s Department of Health, which issues death certificates in the state, did not respond to questions about how officials are certifying the fire’s victims.
Survivors of the fire have not been allowed to return to survey the ruins of their homes and businesses, though some have managed to make their way in on brief forays.
The governor said on Friday that residents and business-owners would soon be allowed to go into the burn zone on scheduled supervised visits.
“The ash, we are told, is quite toxic, so we need to be careful,” Green said.
The US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers are leading the removal of toxic debris from Lahaina, a clean-up that Green said would take “the better part of a year” and cost about $1 billion.
The state was asking the owners of short-term rental properties on the island to consider renting their properties long-term to people left homeless by the fire, and was speaking with several hotels about leasing their entire properties for the displaced, Green said.
More than 6,000 survivors of the fire are still sheltering in hotel rooms, Green said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was helping the state provide housing grants and rental assistance for displaced people for the next 18 months, he said.
Lahaina was built along the shore where Maui’s western volcano slopes down into the Pacific Ocean, and it was the former seat of the Hawaiian Kingdom before becoming a popular tourist destination. How it might be rebuilt remains unclear.
“The people of Maui must have as much time as they need to heal and recover and will begin to rebuild only when they are ready,” Green said. “I want to emphasize this again: The land in the Lahaina is reserved for its people as they return and rebuild.”
انشئ حساباً خاصاً بك لتحصل على أخبار مخصصة لك ولتتمتع بخاصية حفظ المقالات وتتلقى نشراتنا البريدية المتنوعة