In January 2024, reports appeared on social networks that Romania was allegedly preparing to capture the western part of Ukraine and was building a highway for this. We decided to check if this is true.

On January 7, news began to spread on Telegram channels that Romania was building a highway connecting Bucharest and the western regions of Ukraine. It was argued that the purpose of construction was to provide access to Romanian ports, bypassing Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, and then to occupy part of the territory of Ukraine. As evidence, the posts were accompanied by photographs of construction work and a map of the road. Telegram channels, in particular, wrote about this “Ostashko! Important"(126,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Yakov Kedmi" (76,000) and "Tucker Carlson"(60,000).

The road shown on the map in the viral posts exists, but is still mostly in the planning stages. Talk about creating a highway were carried out since 2011, but only in 2016 Romanian Ministry of Transport made public a strategic plan for the construction of a network of expressways throughout the country. The A7 Moldova highway, according to the plan, should run from Bucharest to the Ukrainian border.

Thus, the construction of the road is exclusively related to the development strategy of Romania. The plan was published six years before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and it is unlikely that Romanian officials foresaw that Ukrainian ports would be closed due to Russian missile attacks. In addition, the route should connect the western regions of Ukraine with Bucharest, and not with the main port of Constanta, so it is not entirely clear how this task relates to access to the sea.

Today the road has become a long-term construction project. Bye open only one 16-kilometer section of the highway near the city of Bacau.

By the end of 2024 planned to complete the first kilometers of the highway between the cities of Bacau and Focsani, and by April 2025 to put this section into operation. The northern part of the highway, adjacent to the Ukrainian border, has not even begun to be built.

The footage of the work shown in viral posts is also real - they are taken from the publication’s report Ziarul de Bacău, which did not talk about plans to seize Ukraine, but about the pace of construction of a specific section of the road.

Screenshot of the article Ziarul de Bacău

Thus, posts in Telegram channels about the impending occupation of Ukraine by Romania are manipulation. Based on news about the construction of a real highway, the construction of which was planned back in 2016, the authors of the posts concluded that the road is connected with Romania’s plans to seize part of Ukraine. Until now, none of the representatives of the Romanian authorities have spoken about such plans, and the authors have not explained the connection between the road and the occupation.

Cover photo: Ziarul de Bacău