NATO vows 'absolute solidarity' with Romania over Russian drone • FRANCE 24 English

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Let's bring in our international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert. Doug, great to see you. So, uh this incident in Romania Romania is a NATO member. So, it's a reminder that the alliance is being dragged into this. Um what is Putin trying to do here? Is he testing the solidarity of the alliance or its resolve?

[00:00:21]>> Yeah. Yeah, well, he is testing the solidarity and the resolve of the alliance. Uh look, drones in general have redefined the way we see warfare, the way we define war. Um we've seen more and more of them since Russia's war launched its war against Ukraine in 2022. We have seen more and more routinely and frequently over the last say month to year to 18 months these intrusions of drones and other types of unmanned aircraft and sometimes even jet fighters um into NATO airspace. Um so, what we've seen if you really sort of want to trace a ground zero launch point for when this pattern really began in earnest, you know, last September uh the year NATO alliance basically created a mission to investigate ways of shoring up its eastern flank, so to speak, against what it sees as this this more and more persistent threat of Russian aircraft of various kinds straying into NATO airspace. And so, they've spoken of a drone war so on and so forth. That mission was set up. I'm going back to September 2025, so we're like 9 months ago. It was set up because 20 Russian drones had had strayed into Polish airspace at the time. They were intercepted, you might remember at the time, shot down uh by by NATO jets.

[00:01:32]Uh but you've also seen drones straying not just into Poland, but into Romania.

[00:01:36]There was a a previous incident involving a drone in Romania that that hit a building. No one had been injured in that incident, just damages. We've also seen like I said, fighter aircraft uh straying into NATO air straying is is a charitable term, Catherine.

[00:01:52]Fighter aircraft having to escort Russia Russian unmanned aircraft out of or even manned aircraft out of NATO airspace.

[00:02:00]And this is not one, two, three, or four times, Catherine. These incidents in the past a year and a half, year to year and a half, have happened at least 300 times. So, you could say there's a point at which you say, is Putin trying to test the limits of NATO resolve? Sure, you can make a very strong case to see Putin already sees NATO as weak and divided and perhaps not a really forceful alliance when push comes to shove. And you're seeing how far I can go. But what we can definitely say is, yeah, if you're in a community or town on on the NATO border, such as this one in Romania, you're on edge right now.

[00:02:33]You don't know what's going to come next. And there's also, among NATO itself, they could say, "We're all here to protect each other." But how far are they willing to go without, and this is always the fear within NATO, provoking a wider conflict?

[00:02:48]>> Now, the NATO has come out and said the NATO chief has come out and said it's expressed solidarity with Romania. I understand though some other members are calling for stiffer punishment for Russia.

[00:02:59]>> Yeah. So, you always have a lot of divisions within NATO when it comes to how to respond to these. Do you over You don't want to go hyperbolic. You don't want to be seen as over playing it and playing to Putin's hands. You know, there are those who argue that Putin would like nothing more than NATO to make a really big deal of this, right? A drone strays Romania because then it hardens and reinforces his own narrative at home of NATO being provoked into some action, right? And NATO becoming essentially what Russian propaganda says, the aggressor, right? NATO's posing an existential threat to Russia, encroaching on us. They're the threat, not us. We're purely here for defense, good good Mother Russia.

[00:03:34]And so, if you do provoke NATO too much and you provoke them into a response, that really it just dovetails perfectly with the propaganda narrative that Russia state-controlled TV is is is giving. But NATO, some members, especially the ones in the eastern front flank, Poland, the Baltic states, who have very a lot of historical experience being on Russia's border, the the Czech president just recently in recent days said called for much stiffer punitive measures. He even said going up to what he would call an asymmetric response by NATO to really bring it home to Putin.

[00:04:07]Things like switching off the internet.

[00:04:09]I don't quite know what he means by that. Cutting the the the the ties of Russia's banks to the global financial and banking system. A lot of that's already been done with Swift. And basically just hammering away with Russia with more than just words. A lot of people say that is NATO's just about words, but when push comes to shove, Putin knows at the end of the day it's not going to do that much.

[00:04:29]>> And Doug, how do incidents like this play in Russia, if at all?

[00:04:33]>> Yeah.

[00:04:33]The the if at all part is is really important here because Russians tend to see very little of of the narrative about the consequences of Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine, which means they have an earful an earful every single night on on their first channel, their state-controlled channel, about the horrific Ukrainian strikes deep within Russian territory. And that's all true, by the way. The Ukrainians have been striking at oil refineries and military targets deeper and deeper within Russia. Often relying on its more sophisticated now drone technology. So, that's not a lie, but the problem is it's out of context cuz it's not showing the flip side. It should The Russians get to see almost nothing of the devastating missile and drone bombardments against Ukraine. And my guess would be that they are not getting the the same narrative about the significance of this drone straying into Romania.

[00:05:24]A safe bet that my crony here that my commentary here is not going to be playing on the Russia's first channel tonight, at least not in its entirety.

[00:05:32]Um because it does go against a little bit of the Russian narrative here. How does it play out in Russia? It's really not registering for Russians. The narrative there has been drummed into their heads and also a new generation of Russian school children that NATO is an aggressive alliance. It's an offensive alliance, not the defensive alliance that NATO says it is, that it continues to encroach on Russia's borders, and if Russia doesn't do something to defend itself, NATO, before you know it, is going to be basically taking over Russia. NATO is the devil in all the Russian narratives, and I suspect, and I know from seeing some of it, that's how it's playing out right now, at least on Russia's state-controlled television.

[00:06:10]>> Doug, thank you so much. That's our international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert.