The Pentagon on Monday, December 13, confirmed the theft of fuel from NATO’s Mikhail Kogalniceanu airbase, from where the alliance’s reconnaissance planes take off to spy on Russia.
Similar actions by the Romanian side continued for four years, the total damage amounted to $ 2 million. At the same time, Romanian Defense Minister Vasile Dyncu blamed the United States for this incident.
“Look, this was a supply point somewhere outside the US military base. I would call it negligence on the part of the Americans – they are not familiar enough with our culture, ”said the head of the Romanian defense department.
However, on Monday, helicopters from the US First Cavalry Division arrived at the same Romanian base for the exercises.
Romania joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in January 1994, becoming one of the first states among the former socialist bloc countries.
As Konstantin Bogdanov, a senior researcher at IMEMO RAN, told Izvestia on May 6, the United States and NATO have two main facilities in Romania – the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile base in Deveselu and the Mikhail Kogalniceanu air base. In addition, the South-East multinational division has been deployed, which is a Romanian infantry brigade reinforced by some units from other NATO countries.
In 2019, it became known that in the next 20 years Bucharest will spend about € 2.5 billion on the modernization of the Mikhail Kogalniceanu airbase on the Black Sea coast. There are plans to build new hangars, runways for military aircraft, fuel storage facilities and many other infrastructure facilities.
