A Ukrainian Maritime Drone Self-Destructs in the Port of Constanța

No one was hurt. Ukraine's navy said the drone had drifted out of control after Russian electronic-warfare interference in the Black Sea, and that it had passed warning to the Romanian navy about four hours before the detonation — time enough for Romanian authorities to evacuate Constanța, the country's largest port, and clear more than a thousand people from nearby beaches and the Danube Delta. President Nicușor Dan said three further Ukrainian drones that had lost control detonated offshore, and laid the cause at Russia's door.

The incident is the sharp edge of a structural problem: the electronic-warfare environment both sides now saturate the Black Sea with does not respect borders, and a jammed Ukrainian drone is as liable to drift onto NATO territory as a Russian one. Constanța sits a few hundred metres of error away from a NATO oil terminal.

The proprietary read. This is the war's spillover arriving by accident rather than intent, which makes it harder to deter and harder to answer. A deliberate Russian strike on NATO soil triggers a policy response; a friendly drone jammed off course triggers an evacuation and a shrug. The structural exposure is the one the Galați incursions revealed — the alliance's eastern littoral is inside the war's electromagnetic and physical reach, and the four-hour warning that saved Constanța is not a system, it is luck with a phone call. Tracked in Signal No. 76.