Intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports bring blasts, evacuations and fear of escalation to border communities
A
t the edge of Romania’s Danube delta on the border with Ukraine, in the village of Plauru, cows graze in flat, marshy fields. Houses with blue-painted roofs and window frames line a dirt track, many shuttered or abandoned.
Residents can see the cranes and silos of Izmail, a Ukrainian port city separated from Plauru by the 300 metre-width of the Danube River. By day the scene is deceptively calm. But sometimes, after dark, that calm dissolves.
The hum of drones cuts through the night, followed by explosions that rattle windows and shake people out of their beds.
