Speaking on the margins of Friday's EU gathering in Brussels, Romanian President Nicușor Dan told a television interviewer that the Black Sea would remain unsafe until the conflict in Ukraine ends, urged NATO to broaden its monitoring presence in the area following drone strikes on commercial vessels, and expressed an expectation that the alliance would provide both the backing and the operational tools needed to reinforce protections there — framing the matter as an economic priority for Ukraine and the wider region.
Dan told reporters that drone incursions into Romania's airspace had been occurring for roughly eighteen months before the matter came to the president's attention, adding that authorities in Bucharest had lacked the readiness to respond. He noted that the country faces a comparable readiness gap along its eastern flank, particularly at the Black Sea, where he said the defensive posture mirrors the vulnerabilities seen elsewhere, and that subsurface waters within national territory require protection. Dan also conveyed that he views ongoing backing from the US president as mutually advantageous, citing the country's geographic positioning as a platform for projecting force toward other regions, and framing that arrangement as beneficial to both parties within the NATO alliance.
Those remarks came against the backdrop of declarations from US President Donald Trump on troop reductions and a review of military positioning in Europe and Ukraine.
At a periodic summit of EU heads of state held in the Belgian capital, discussions ranged across financial support for Ukraine, the bloc's multi-year budget framework, and a growing imbalance in trade flows with China. Tensions along the Black Sea coastline had grown to a point where both Dan and Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev placed security concerns at the forefront of their discussions.
A three-way meeting drew together the two leaders and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, with conditions on the ground pushing all parties toward talks on bolstering their collective response. During the talks, Sofia put forward requests covering combat aircraft and systems designed to counter drone threats.
Rutte told reporters that NATO planned to build up its presence along the alliance's eastern edge, including through expanded capacity to counter drone threats, and posted on X that the bloc would keep coordinating with allies in the Black Sea region, adapting its deterrence and defence arrangements as circumstances required. The remarks came as Ukraine continued to rely on overland and river-alternative trade corridors to reach grain buyers in Africa and the Middle East following a sustained pattern of Russian strikes on its Black Sea and Danube port infrastructure.
Following the summit, Dan told reporters that France had committed to providing "necessary equipment" and to gaining a clearer picture of Romania's particular needs in the Black Sea region, adding that while new challenges continually arise, Romania's alliance network remains a source of reassurance.
Unmanned aerial vehicles struck cargo ships navigating Black Sea waters near the Bulgarian and Romanian shorelines across three consecutive days before the Brussels gathering, with further attacks recorded throughout the preceding week. One vessel went down following drone strikes in that period, with two crew members losing their lives in the incident. The development left maritime routes across the region open to potential incidents.
As of the latest reporting, officials in both Sofia and Bucharest have stopped short of formally attributing the attacks to Russia. In remarks made several days prior, Radev put forward the view that the Kremlin stood to benefit most from the lethal attacks, while making clear that definitive evidence had not been established. Each of those cases remains under active investigation.
Speaking to reporters after talks with European leaders on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put forward the position that an invasion does not require a ground war to take place. Zelenskyy went on to say that drone incursions into the airspace of Romania, Poland, and Germany had already been recorded, and that incidents in the Black Sea — along with a drone carrying explosives discovered at Leipzig airport — pointed to a pattern of probing how European nations would respond to such boundary violations. One matching drone turned up on German soil. Moldova and Bulgaria found themselves drawn into the same wave of disruption.
Zelenskyy and other senior Ukrainian officials have attributed a number of those incidents to Russia, pointing in particular to a drone strike on a grain-carrying vessel that left people dead off the Bulgarian coastline.
