Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for an “objective investigation” into a drone incident in Romania that injured two individuals. Moscow is ready to share its assessment if provided with either the debris of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or the data about it, he stated on Friday.

A drone crashed into an apartment block in Galati, an eastern Romanian city near the Ukrainian border early on Friday morning. The Romanian Defense Ministry claimed the UAV originated from Russia.

Putin noted that drones have previously crashed in various EU nations, including Finland, Poland, and the Baltic States. “A short time later, it would emerge that these incidents had nothing to do with Russian aircraft at all. Rather, they involved drones of Ukrainian origin that had gone off course due to electronic warfare… or technical shortcomings,” he said during a visit to Kazakhstan.

Putin urged Romanian authorities to share “objective evidence” with Russia, adding that Moscow did the same when Ukrainian military targeted a Russian presidential residence in a drone strike. “Let them [Romanians] do the same and provide the evidence to us,” he stated.

Romanian President Nicusor Dan visited the crash site on Friday and told journalists that the incident could have been caused by Ukrainian air defenses. He explained that the drone was part of a group of Russian UAVs deployed against targets in Ukraine. “Some of them were shot down over Ukrainian territory, and one of them was probably hit above the city of Reni. Its trajectory changed and it came toward Galati,” he said.

Dan added that Romanian authorities have data on the drone’s movement and that the incident resulted from reckless decisions by Ukrainian military leadership near the border, not a deliberate act of Russian aggression.

This event follows a pattern where Ukraine has been involved in incidents across Europe, including an S-300 air defense missile strike in Poland in 2022 that killed two people. In that case, Warsaw determined that the projectile was fired by Ukraine to repel Russian strikes.