The HotNews.ro team spoke with local residents of the village of Plauru, Čatalkioi commune, about what life is like a few hundred meters from the war in Ukraine, a day before the Ministry of National Defense and President Iohannis officially confirmed that fragments of a Russian military drone had fallen on the territory of the village So far they deny it.

If you don’t live there, you should have a good reason to want to get to the village of Plauru, Cheatalkioi commune, on the Chilia branch. First you have to cross the Danube by ferry, from Tulcea to Tudor Vladimirescu, only between 7am and 7pm in summer and 7am and 5pm in winter. After that, you have to drive 15 kilometers on a dirt road and with a very poor phone signal.

While the authorities in Bucharest have left the 50 inhabitants of the village of Plauru on the edge of civilization, the war in Ukraine has made them famous around the world: Romania’s Ministry of Defense confirmed on Wednesday that fragments of a Russian drone used in attacks against the port of Izmail, located 250 -300 meters across the Kili branch, were discovered on the territory of Romania.

The announcement came after President Iohannis and the Ministry of National Defense strongly denied it the other day. This is despite the fact that since Monday, Kyiv has been reporting that Russian drones fell on Romanian territory during an attack on Monday morning in the Danube area.

Later, an independent site that geolocates images confirmed the version of the Ukrainians.

Now, for the local residents of Plaur, the fact that the remains of a drone fell in their area is already an insignificant detail.

It is good that the explosive device did not fall on the house or even on the head of a local resident, as was expected about a month and a half since the Russians began bombing the Ukrainian ports of Danube, Reni, Izmail, etc. recently, Chilia.

In fact, residents of Plaur also reported at the beginning of August that a Russian drone had crossed the territory of Romania. The Ministry of National Defense says it checked and found nothing.

Standing on the shores of the Kili Arm, one can understand the shouting among the workers loading the ships with grain in the port of Ishmael, or how they hide when the alarm sounds, the assurances of President Yohannis cannot reassure you.

When was a 200-300 meter wide water line a protective wall against missiles, bombs or kamikaze drones? And if the Ukrainians have agricultural fertilizers in the port that can explode, how did it happen in Beirut in 2020? – some locals ask themselves, anxiously looking through binoculars at the cargo on the docks of the nearby port.

They always got along well with the Ukrainians, and last year they even helped one to swim to us and ask for asylum in Europe, which greatly annoyed the Ukrainian border guards who came for him and sent him to the front.

If you collected all the videos of the local residents Cheatalkioi and Plauru of the explosions in Ismail, the news sites would be busy for days. Because that’s what people do – they film on their phones to have evidence in case something happens.

Watch the video footage made by HotNews.ro in the commune of Čatalkioi.