Romania has been playing just as much of an important strategic role in assisting Ukraine as Poland, the recently leaked Pentagon documents show.
Primarily, it helps in the training of Ukrainian forces, as well as doing transport and reconnaissance missions for NATO, Spotmedia reported.
The government has not always openly addressed the amount of assistance it provides to Ukraine. But the Pentagon papers show it’s secretly playing a “key role” in the strategic and combat training of Ukrainian troops, as well as in the transfer of Western equipment and monitoring of the front, including via reconnaissance missions flown by at least one piloted aircraft and two UAVs in early March, the New Conservative reported.
The Romanian public has been unaware about all of this until now, and officials were explicitly forbidden from providing any such information, the publication said.
The only explanation, given by unnamed political sources who requested anonymity is that the government “did not want to jeopardize Moldova’s neutrality and expose Chișinău to even more pressure from Moscow.”
Bucharest treads carefully around Moldovan issues to avoid displaying too much enthusiasm for helping Chișinău in the eyes of Moscow.
Bucharest is also being quiet about assisting Ukraine because public opinion is divided about the issue.
Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu told the BBC the government had made a strategic choice not to communicate the scale of its support to Ukraine, adding that Romanians could expect to know more after the war ended.
Asked about polls showing that a significant portion of the population rejects assisting Ukraine, Aurescu said he was confident that the majority stands by the government’s decisions.
President Klaus Iohannis said last summer it would be unwise to spill strategic information. “We are at war, not chatting quietly over coffee,” he told reporters. “All we can say publicly, is that we are helping Ukraine with everything we can.”
The recent leaks do not mention anything about large-scale Romanian arms shipments.
According to the leaked documents, the role that Romania plays in training, transport, and reconnaissance is still significant. Asked about the leaks, government spokesman Dan Cărbunaru simply said: “We do not comment on press speculation.”
