Romania has already gone to war with Russia or is on the verge of doing so, claims the pro-Russian blogger Dan Diaconu.
NEWS: The Russians have begun to disable Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and the Danube. They have destroyed several ships ostensibly carrying ‘cargo’, but which were in fact transporting weapons. At the very least, judging by the scale of the explosions, there is no longer any doubt.
However, the story posted by the Victor Vicktop account is extremely strange to us. It suggests that Romania has deployed aircraft to compensate for the inadequacy of Ukraine’s air defences. And that would be a serious matter, as it would represent Romania’s de facto entry into the war.
The same report states that “the aircraft were deployed solely for reconnaissance purposes, as two fully loaded SU-57s were present in the Black Sea”.
Should we understand from this that the Russians are now sending aircraft to monitor the activities of the Romanian air force? But why on earth? Why would the Russians harbour such suspicions? Has something else happened?
The point is that, if the information turns out to be true, the presence of Russian military aircraft in the vicinity of Romanian airspace would be huge news for everyone. The Ministry of Defence is keeping completely quiet. I wonder why? The question is simple: HAS THE ARMY DEPLOYED FIGHTER JETS? AND IF SO, WHY? HAVE WE REACHED THE POINT WHERE WE ARE COMPENSATING, FROM ROMANIA, FOR UKRAINE’S INABILITY TO DEFEND ITSELF? Because that would mean we’ve gone to war!
NARRATIVE: Romania is, de facto, at war with Russia.
PURPOSE: To promote a sovereignist and anti-establishment narrative, to validate its own conspiracy theories, and to provoke anti-government protests and social movements.
Deploying military aircraft does not constitute intervention in the conflict
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: The narrative originates from a post on an English-language Telegram channel, known for its pro-Kremlin and, more recently, pro-Iranian views. In the message quoted by Dan Diaconu, the user Victor vicktop55 claims that, during the Russian attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure on 14 July 2026, against the backdrop of “the Ukrainian air defence’s inability to cope with the attack, Romania ordered the deployment of aircraft”. From the outset, we can see the ‘flimsiness’ of the claim, due to the lack of clear information regarding the type of aircraft scrambled by the Romanian armed forces, their number, or the duration of the mission carried out. But even under these circumstances, the post states quite clearly that the mission was one of observation, and Diaconu’s suggestion that this constitutes “Romania’s de facto entry into the war” is not only speculative but downright manipulative, given that the Romanian Air Force has carried out dozens of patrol and observation missions within its area of responsibility since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, without Russia interpreting them as acts of war.
In fact, there is absolutely no statement from Moscow regarding this alleged incident, nor any declaration suggesting that Russia considers itself to have been attacked by Romania. According to the Ministry of National Defence, during the period referred to in the article under review, fighter aircraft took off from Romania to monitor the situation on 7 July 2026, when military radars identified a group of aerial targets near Serpent Island, and on 20 July when the Ministry of National Defence’s radar surveillance system detected a group of aerial targets near the border with Romania, approximately 23 kilometres north-west of the Ukrainian town of Vâlcove. The absence of similar incidents during this period also explains the ‘silence’ of the Ministry of Defence in Bucharest on the matter. Furthermore, on that date (14 July 2026), the Ministry of National Defence reported only one medical air mission, which took off from the 90th Air Transport Base at Otopeni to carry out a humanitarian transport of a patient with burns to Belgium, without flying over any part of the Black Sea. It is true that, between 14 and 20 July 2026, the Romanian Air Force command announced the conduct of “low-altitude and supersonic training flights across the entire country”, but it is highly unlikely that Russian propaganda would refer to these. However, if some of these training exercises did take place during Russian attacks on Ukraine, these were nothing more than mere coincidences. Such exercises are planned well in advance, and the suggestion that Romania would coordinate its training with Russian attacks in order to disguise a response to them is ridiculous.
Furthermore, the original account refers to the destruction of “at least five cargo ships”, a claim that contradicts Ukrainian reports stating that, on that day, Russian fire damaged (but did not destroy) only three commercial vessels. Furthermore, Diaconu’s claim that “in reality” the vessels in question were carrying weapons, given the “scale of the explosions”, is merely speculation intended, on the one hand, to justify previous false narratives that exaggerate Russia’s military superiority and, on the other, to validate his own views on Ukraine’s imminent defeat. The video accompanying the post, just 5 seconds long, shows a vessel at sea surrounded by thick black smoke, without showing any explosion, however small, nor does it in any way appear from the footage that the scene in question was filmed in the Black Sea. Indeed, it is easy to see that the original post employs typical methods of conspiracy-theory argumentation, based on vague and almost impossible-to-verify information, such as the failure to clearly identify the ‘oil loading terminal, which had also been attacked the day before’, even though the first paragraph lists six ports attacked by Russian forces on 14 July 2026. The rest of Dan Diaconu’s considerations and dilemmas, apart from being redundant (it is perfectly normal that, in the midst of war, the Russians should be interested not only in the movements of their direct enemy but also in those of the enemy’s partners), are also deeply speculative. The fact that Romania scrambled aircraft during a Russian attack on Ukraine does not mean that it intervened in Ukraine’s defence, but rather that it is fulfilling its obligation to monitor and protect its national airspace, especially when attacks are taking place very close to the border.
Not even the recent missions by the Romanian Air Force, during which three military drones were shot down (at least one of which has already been identified as belonging to Moscow’s forces) can be regarded as attacks on Russia, as they took place on Romanian territory in ‘self-defence’. Furthermore, the fact that Russian drones are violating Romania’s airspace does not in itself constitute an attack on our country’s territory, but rather, as most experts assert, provocations through which “Russia is testing the Romanian people’s resilience to aggression”. In a statement to G4Media, historian Cosmin Popa stated that “these incidents will increase in number and will also occur in regions of the country that have not faced anything like this before. I believe it is important for the Romanian authorities to accept that such ‘incidents’ are not mistakes, but military probing by Russia, aimed at testing the military response, but above all the political one. Such ‘deviations’ from the intended route do not so much test military capabilities – which Romania is known to possess – as the willingness of certain leaders and a nation to resist aggression.”
In conclusion, Dan Diaconu’s account does not prove that Romania is on the brink of war with Russia or that it has already entered into direct conflict with it. Such a claim would require clear evidence of the direct involvement of Romanian forces in combat operations, not merely the take-off of surveillance or interception aircraft and the shooting down of targets that have entered Romanian airspace without authorisation. Accusations disguised as ‘rhetorical’ questions do not fall into this category.
Dan Diaconu, the aggregator of positive news about Russia
CONTEXT: The narrative of Romania being drawn into a direct conflict with Russia is by no means new; it has been circulating in the media since before Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine. After the war broke out, a number of other claims emerged – including that Romania is already participating in the war in Ukraine with thousands of troops, according to a secret agreement at government level. Pro-Russian propaganda has also claimed that Romania is preparing to enter the war or that our country is being pushed into the conflict in Ukraine by foreign troops on national territory. It all came to a head last year, when the ‘sovereignists’ even announced the exact date of Romania’s entry into the war, namely 3 September 2025. A “variation” on this narrative was promoted, immediately after the outbreak of war in the Middle East in February 2026, by the conspiracy theorist and AUR MEP Gheorghe Piperea, who claimed, following two drone incidents on the island of Cyprus, that Romania is obliged by the EU treaty to go to war with Iran.
Dan Diaconu, who describes himself as an economic analyst, is a pro-Russian blogger whose website is a jumble of conspiracy theories, fake news and disinformation on most current affairs topics, as well as articles in which Russia is held up as a model state and its aggression against Ukraine is praised. His ‘economic’ articles are in fact eulogies to states outside the ‘globalist’ circle, presented as models of success, with the aim of demonstrating that prosperity can be achieved even if a country chooses its own economic model, based on a policy that is entirely independent of that of various international organisations, particularly those in which the US and Western European states have a significant say. Over time, Diaconu has promoted numerous false narratives and pieces of disinformation, such as those claiming that partnerships with the US lead to bankruptcy, while agreements with Russia ensure prosperity, or the one in which he claimed Moscow’s technological superiority over Washington, following a non-existent capture by Russian forces of a state-of-the-art American drone. In the same vein, Dan Diaconu falsely claimed that Russia had developed a cancer vaccine. At the same time, he constantly promotes ‘classic’ narratives of anti-Ukrainian propaganda, such as those claiming that Ukrainian pilots trained in Romania are drunkards and incompetent, as well as baseless lies and speculation, such as the claim that Ukraine is literally selling its land to Poland. In January, the same Dan Diaconu claimed that the Americans would take Volodymyr Zelensky to Israel, where his parents were already living in luxury, to save him from criminal prosecution. Furthermore, in a ‘frontline diary’ he keeps on Telegram – in which he reports only on victories by the Russian army – whenever he announces the capture and complete destruction of yet another Ukrainian town, he refers to its ‘liberation’.
The Telegram channel from which Diaconu ‘drew his inspiration’ this time belongs, according to Sputnik, to ‘a Russian news writer’. In @vicktop55’s posts, Romania is not presented as a direct participant in the war, although it is mentioned on several occasions for allowing NATO infrastructure to be used in the training of Ukrainian military personnel, and for providing logistical support to Ukraine. The channel also notes that, for this reason, our country RISKS being drawn into a direct conflict with Russia. In most cases where Romania is mentioned, the arguments put forward by @vicktop55 do not stem from the account’s own research or investigations, but are reposts of statements, images or material published by other Telegram channels and, in particular, by the Russian media. Indeed, all of @vicktop55’s posts about the war in Ukraine frequently reproduce material from RT News, Sputnik, the Russian Ministry of Defence and other pro-Russian channels, while the author’s comments are favourable to the Kremlin’s positions and critical of Ukraine and the West. Overall, the channel’s content combines factual information, authentic material and strongly biased commentary, with a selection of topics and sources that consistently favour the Russian perspective. Its credibility is severely undermined by the fact that it presents Russia and its actions in a favourable light, frequently publishes material on BRICS, China, Iran and North Korea in a positive or justifying tone, and distributes content claiming that the West is responsible for the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
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