If Romanians wanted Tomac as prime minister, they would have voted for him in 2024.
FOCUS: Discover before drones
Every few days, in one of the countries on the eastern flank of NATO, there is a military incident caused by Russia. So far, the most targeted have been the Baltics, but Romania is coming strongly behind: after the Russian drone that exploded on a block of flats in Galati, on Friday, another drone, this time naval (and Ukrainian), entered the Port of Constanța and self-detonated. Four others self-destructed at sea. Fortunately, there were no casualties. Someone actually counted the incidents this year and it turned out that there were 14 in Romania, while none in Poland. The author's conclusion would be that, after the Poles reacted firmly, the Russians are now looking further south for other weak points in NATO's defense. And we seem like the perfect victim.
Caught, again, unprepared
Romania's official position after the Constanta explosion, expressed by several voices, including President Nicușor Dan, Defense Minister Radu Miruță or the Romanian Naval Authority, is, in short, the following: 1. Now we are unprepared, we have nothing to effectively fight against these weapons. We already knew that, after the Galați incident. But in the case of Constanța, given that it was still a 5.5 meter long boat, things seem simpler than in the case of a Geran 2, which flies at night, under the radar. It seems that is not the case at all. 2. The subject of naval drone defense will be discussed at NATO, and Romania is waiting for equipment, in the next period, with which to defend itself. 3. The Ukrainians lost control of the device due to Russian jamming in the Black Sea (as a parenthesis, an out-of-control Ukrainian drone was found precisely in the Mediterranean Sea, near the Greek island of Lefkada).
The fourth conclusion does not come from our authorities, but from the international press: EU and US countries are increasingly alarmed by the fact that Russia manages to jam the GPS signal in Europe, and in an analysis cited by Sky News it is said that “GPS signal jamming is also responsible for the drone that exploded in the port of Constanța”.
Putin's “ghost fleet” problem
The context in which the Constanța incident took place is also important. Ukraine aims to sink oil tankers from Russia's so-called “ghost fleet”, which violate the European embargo and transport Russian oil, with vessels under foreign flags, pretending to be from Kazakhstan or another country. Five Azerbaijani sailors also lost their lives last Friday after their ships were hit in the Sea of Azov by drones attributed to the Ukrainians.
The subject of the oil that the Russians secretly sell is not exactly an easy one: for example, Kazakh oil is transported by pipelines to the nearby Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, from where it is loaded onto tankers and shipped around the world. It is reasonable to assume that goods from Kazakhstan can easily be replaced by goods from Russia. One of the favorite phrases in Russia when someone wants to buy Western products that are theoretically embargoed due to sanctions is “call a Kazakh”. Friends know why.
The Ukrainians frequently attack the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which has drawn criticism from the Americans, who accuse them of harming US and Kazakh interests.
In this context, Spotmedia wrote that a ship on Ukraine's target list would have been tracked by Ukrainian maritime drones to be hit, while it was returning to Novorossiysk after unloading oil in the port of Midia Navodari. Hence the plausible speculation that this is how the Ukrainian drone would have arrived so close to the Romanian coast.
Rompetrol, which is controlled by the Kazakh company KMG International, responded to the accusation that the vessel in question is not on any list of sanctions, neither European nor American, and the oil transported is 100% Kazakh. Likewise, the Romanian authorities also denied it.
On the other hand, the discussion underlines, once again, how complicated it is to monitor the application of sanctions against Russia, in a slippery area such as hydrocarbons transported by sea.
People evacuated from the beaches, during the summer season
The real problem, however, is that there are more and more security incidents in Romania and we are not prepared for them. On Friday, the beaches along the coast were evacuated to a distance of one kilometer from the seashore. Now, it seems we can do no more.
Even if we are not directly attacked, Russia's war has many faces. The information war is also very important: for example, pro-Russian bloggers in Romania are trying to spread the fear that Ukraine has intentionally attacked the port of Constanța. Why would they? Well, there are some conspiracy theories that defy logic and common sense. But that doesn't mean many people aren't willing to believe them.
The most effective defense is built in peacetime
I don't think there can be a better definition for what is happening to us than the one that results from the words of the Romanian general who occupies the highest position in the NATO command structures, Adrian Ciolponea. The Romanian officer specializes in the integration of drones in the armies of the future and gave an interview to HotNews on the very day of the incident in Constanța.
“I am amused by the comments that say that so far we have not had such threats and therefore we do not need protection systems. No! If we want to preserve the integrity of a critical objective, whether it is a port, an airfield, a command point or an energy point, these passive and active measures must be built in peacetime,” said the general.
A non-transparent contract awarded by SRI
Four years have passed since the start of the war in Ukraine, and it seems that we have barely woken up. In fact, the Europeans woke us up with the SAFE military endowment program, which for Romania means almost 17 billion euros. There are many investments in armaments that we will make with this money, including defense systems against drones.
But a 196 million euro contract for cyber security, awarded completely non-transparently by the SRI to the telecommunications company Digi (which also owns the television of the same name), also appeared on SAFE's money. The SRI didn't even initially admit that it dealt with the problem, it was forced by the controversy that arose around the subject.
And if another military scandal was needed, it came at just the right time. While we were paying attention to see who and how he receives the money from SAFE, and which politician he is friends with, DNA informed us that the Chief of the Defense Staff, Gheorghiță Vlad, is accused of arranging the transfer of some students from places with a fee to those without a fee. The events allegedly took place in July 2025, so we might wonder what the prosecutors have done with this case so far.
Against this background, in which Romanians have perhaps begun to become more aware of how precious security is, which many other nations do not have, we are also experiencing a political crisis, which is increasingly original. Eugen Tomac, the leader of a non-parliamentary party, was appointed by the president to form “a technical government”, not a technocrat, without party members, but supported, however, by the political parties in Parliament.
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PUZZLE: Who will the Tomac Government represent?
I expressed myself last week on the subject of “Eugen Tomac premier” and said that after the cancellation of the presidential elections, we now also have the cancellation of the parliamentary elections. Even if some consider the statement too harsh, I have arguments for this.
The first would be that if Romanians wanted Eugen Tomac as prime minister, they would have voted for him in the 2024 elections. At that time, PMP participated in an alliance, Forța Dreptei, which obtained 2% in the Chamber of Deputies and 1.88% in the Senate. PMP did not enter the Parliament, but Eugen Tomac was already a member of the European Parliament and, in the meantime, he also became an honorary adviser to the president for Romanians everywhere. Maybe it matters or it's just a coincidence, Tomac was born in the south of Bessarabia, in Ukraine, and is a supporter of the union of Romania with the Republic of Moldova, just like his political mentor, Traian Băsescu.
The resolution of the crisis had to come from the PSD
If Romanians' ballot options mattered, then the most natural choice for the president, after the dismissal of the coalition government led by Ilie Bolojan, would have been PSD, the party that obtained the most votes in December 2024.
In the defense of the president is the fact that he wanted to avoid a government in which AUR would be a part. But what is worst in a democracy? To completely ignore the will of the citizens or invest a government that also includes a party with anti-democratic leanings?
Eugen Tomac has 10 days, i.e. until Sunday, to come up with a government in Parliament, to be voted by at least 233 MPs. Several names of technocrat ministers are circulating, some better known, some less so. For example, the favorite for the Ministry of Defense is Dan Neculăescu, a career diplomat who is currently Romania's ambassador to NATO.
In the case of some names, however, you can only raise an eyebrow and wonder what is behind it. For example, what would, for example, the sociologist Vladimir Ionaș, former adviser to Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu in 2017, have to do with the Ministry of Regional Development, other than that a certain party definitely wants him in the ministry that distributes money in the country through programs like Anghel Saligny? Predictably, there are three councilors of Nicușor Dan on the list. I will stop here with the names circulated, but I will return to the topic next week, after we will also see the vote in Parliament.
I would have one more conclusion: this government, no matter what its final composition will be, suffers severely in terms of legitimacy, and the parties that will support it, in terms of commitment. It looks like an opaque government, set up behind closed doors, from which the most likely gainers will be those in AUR.
However, it matters a lot what PSD, PNL and USR will do. Bolojan announced that the liberals will make a decision this week, whether or not they support the government led by Tomac, USR has adopted a similar position, and PSD is setting conditions.
During this time, we are led by interim ministers who are on their way out. When the technological giant Nvidia wanted to talk to someone from the Romanian Government, it realized that, in fact, it had no one to talk to. And he left it alone.
PS The good news of the week comes from Armenia, where Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's pro-European party won the election. The Russians, who have invested heavily in propaganda and disinformation for the pro-Russian opposition to win, were angry and accused the EU of meddling in the election. May they be healthy!
soon,
Gabriel Bejan
