Signal No. 175 · Carfil: SRI ties the Brașov fire to Russia

Romania's domestic intelligence service, the SRI, said on Monday that a sabotage network coordinated from Russia caused the 14 September fire on the Carfil industrial platform in Brașov, beside Carfil SA, a subsidiary of the state arms company Romarm. DIICOT, the prosecutors' directorate for organised crime and terrorism, has opened criminal proceedings against three foreign nationals resident in EU states, two Belarusians and a Ukrainian, for attempted acts of diversion, the Romanian national-security offence that covers sabotage.

Judges at the Bucharest Court of Appeal issued European arrest warrants in absentia. Two of the accused were found and remanded in custody in Germany "while they were preparing to commit similar acts", DIICOT says; a warrant for the third, located in Poland, was issued on Monday, and Romania is seeking the extradition of all three.

The network's tasks were not confined to Romania, the SRI says: "Coordinators in the Russian Federation had assigned it an extended series of targets in the region: arms production facilities, state and private, and other objectives of military and industrial interest." It places the case in "a wider campaign of sabotage operations coordinated by the Russian Federation in Europe", and says investigations this year found other attempts against targets in Romania, including international military facilities and facilities used to train Ukrainian forces.

The defence ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK met in Paris on Monday with Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, and NATO's deputy secretary general, Radmila Shekerinska. At the joint press conference Catherine Vautrin, the French armed forces minister, said the objective endorsed at the NATO summit in Ankara in July, "a stronger Europe within a stronger NATO", would be pursued "with a methodology and a timetable, all in full transparency with the United States, as part of the burden-shifting it is calling for."

Their joint statement says Europe "must assume greater responsibility for its own security" and that this "must begin with the empowerment of European Allies within NATO". The ministers say they are taking "concrete measures" to implement the Hague spending commitments and meet agreed capability targets, and that EU defence initiatives should "remain open, under certain conditions, to meaningful cooperation with non-EU NATO Allies".

Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, a secretary of state in Poland's defence ministry, said on Radio Zet that Warsaw is in talks with the Commission on two changes to SAFE, the EUR 150 billion Security Action for Europe loan. The first would extend the 2030 deadline for deliveries, because contracts financed from any further SAFE money could be signed only in the second half of 2027, she said: "very short deadlines when it comes to the defence industry". The second would allow purchases outside the EU, "particularly" for eastern-flank states, from "the United States, Türkiye, and Korea", once NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe or its secretary general identifies a capability as critical for the eastern flank.

About EUR 20 billion of the original allocations went unclaimed and will return to Brussels, she said; the government is discussing whether to apply for part of it, and Poland's own EUR 43.7 billion allocation will be spent in full. She said the Commission has no mandate to make member states move unused SAFE money into joint projects with Ukraine, and that Poland has no SAFE projects with Ukraine.

Martin Herem, Estonia's defence minister, told the national broadcaster ERR that the ten-year defence development plan, which had reached the Government Office for approval with the state budget strategy, needs improvements in air and maritime defence. He wants jet aircraft considered against Russia's cheap cruise missiles and jet-powered drones: light jets "such as the Hawk, L-39 or something similar", or unmanned jets. ERR reports that around a dozen could be needed and that a purchase could take up to four years; how many, Herem said, "is not yet entirely clear to me", and "we have to consider what we would have to sacrifice". He will raise the issues, not yet as proposals, at a National Defence Council meeting he expects this year.

On Monday the Council adopted decisions mobilising EUR 4.9 billion for Ukraine under the European Peace Facility, allowing the partial reimbursement of military aid already delivered and further financing for the EU Military Assistance Mission that trains Ukrainian soldiers. EU ambassadors agreed the terms on 25 September: EUR 4.7 billion to reimburse member states, EUR 1 billion for joint procurement and EUR 900 million for the training mission, EUR 6.6 billion in all.