BUCHAREST and WASHINGTON—“We must not hide that historically there was distrust between our countries,” Romanian President Nicușor Dan said to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on March 12 in Bucharest. However, Dan continued, “This distrust evaporated at the beginning of the war in 2022, and today is a moment when the two countries assume mutual trust in what they can do together, assume common responsibility for this part of Europe, for its citizens and for the entire region.”
Zelenskyy’s visit to Bucharest marks a politically and strategically significant moment for Romania’s regional role. It is the Ukrainian president’s second visit to Romania since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, but the first under Dan, who took office in May 2025. In this sense, the visit also signals that the initial adjustment period of the new Romanian presidency has effectively ended. Romania is now moving from a phase of positioning and signaling toward one of policy implementation, particularly in areas related to regional security and defense cooperation.
The timing of the visit is particularly relevant. Just one day earlier, Romania’s Parliament approved the deployment of additional US military capabilities on Romanian territory, including aerial refueling aircraft and satellite communication systems with a defensive role. Taken together, the two developments highlight how Romania is consolidating its position on NATO’s eastern flank: strengthening its security relationship with the United States, including support for US operations in the Middle East (Romania also offered its support in Gaza) while simultaneously deepening strategic cooperation with Ukraine.
The Strategic Partnership Declaration that Dan and Zelenskyy signed in Bucharest formalizes a relationship that has been intensifying since the start of the war. The framework covers defense cooperation, energy interconnection, economic collaboration, education, and minority rights. These areas suggest that both governments are seeking to anchor their partnership in long-term strategic interests rather than temporary wartime coordination. The progress made on sensitive issues such as minority rights also suggests that both capitals increasingly view their bilateral relationship through the lens of regional security.
The most strategically consequential outcome of the visit is the agreement on joint drone production in Romania, financed through the SAFE program with an estimated allocation of around €200 million. The logic of the project reflects a new model of cooperation: Ukraine contributes battlefield-tested technological know-how developed during the war, while Romania provides NATO territory, industrial capacity, and access to European defense funding. In practice, this represents a shift from traditional military assistance toward co-production of defense technologies, integrating Ukraine’s wartime innovation into the European defense industrial ecosystem.
Energy cooperation represents another structural dimension of the agreements announced on March 12.
Since late 2022, when Russia began to systematically target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as part of its military strategy, Romania has been one of Ukraine’s most important European energy partners. It has, for example, advocated within the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, known as ENTSO-E, for greater power exports to Ukraine. It has also scrounged Romania’s system for spare parts that could be used for grid and generation repair, and it has leveraged Romania’s long history with civilian nuclear power to support the heroic efforts of Ukraine’s nuclear operator, Energoatom, to maintain safe operations under the most severe stress imaginable.
Romania is likely to become one of the main operational gateways for reconstruction projects and postwar economic cooperation.
In parallel, Ukrainian companies are increasing their footprint in Romania, illustrating how the country’s private sector is adopting an increasingly European focus. For instance, DTEK*, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, is growing its renewables portfolio through new build and acquisitions in Romania’s wind and solar sectors, aiming for a one-gigawatt portfolio by 2030. Projects in this effort include the 60-megawatt Ruginoasa wind farm, the 53-megawatt Glodeni I solar park, and the 126-megawatt Vacaresti solar farm commissioned this past December. Metinvest, DTEK’s sister company, has acquired ArcelorMittal’s Tubular Products plant in Iași, near the Romanian border with Moldova. This cluster of energy and metals investment will now be complemented by defense industry—and in any post-conflict scenario the role of Romanian ports and rail in supporting Ukrainian logistics will grow exponentially.
Meanwhile, Romania’s longstanding support to Moldova—whose grid is umbilically tied to Ukraine—has played an indispensable role in helping both countries to weather four winters of Putin’s energy war and the end of Russian gas deliveries to Transnistria. Plans to accelerate electricity interconnections—such as the Suceava-Chernivtsi line—and to expand cooperation on gas routes and storage capacity point toward a deeper integration of Ukraine into the regional energy network.
Romania is also playing a leading role in advancing the commercial understandings necessary for the Vertical Corridor, a planned gas route from Greece to Ukraine. This effort is opening opportunities for increased US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the region, and it helps position southeastern Europe for the European Union’s 2027 phase-out of all Russian gas. Meanwhile, Romania’s status as the European Union’s largest gas producer—anchored in the offshore Neptun Deep project—points to the future role of Black Sea resources in helping to replace gas formerly sold by Russia. Strategically, this would strengthen Ukraine’s resilience while reinforcing Romania’s ambition to position itself as a regional energy hub linking Ukraine and Moldova with European Union member states.
But Zelenskyy’s visit also showed how the Vertical Corridor is about much more than energy molecules. The discussions in Bucharest point to a broader role for Romania beyond wartime support, with Bucharest increasingly preparing to assume a key role in the reconstruction of Ukraine, particularly in ports, infrastructure, logistics, and cross-border economic integration. With its geographic proximity, access to European Union funding mechanisms, and growing strategic partnership with Kyiv, Romania is likely to become one of the main operational gateways for reconstruction projects and postwar economic cooperation.
Note: DTEK’s parent company, System Capital Management, is an donor.
