Romanians lament that keeping supplies for the Armed Forces secret, except for the Patriot system, was pointless since everything was already labeled Cugir.

The official Bucharest has indeed not disclosed the scale and specifics of military assistance provided to Ukraine since the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion. An exception to this is the information that Romania has supplied our country with a Patriot air defense battery and that a training center at the 86th Air Base of the Romanian Air Force is involved in training our pilots on F-16s.

Therefore, any insights into Romanian defense supplies can only be speculated upon based on open-source data, and even the Romanians themselves have begun to lament that the secrecy surrounding this segment is unnecessary, as the Cugir markings give everything away.

To be more specific, the Romanian publication Defense Romania released a podcast featuring military correspondent Radu Hossu, who was able to visit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the hottest spots on the front as part of his work.

Among other things, the Romanian military correspondent expressed the opinion that the official policy of concealing supplies from Romania to the Armed Forces of Ukraine is practically senseless, at least for this reason.

For instance, Romanian-made firearms and their ammunition are marked with Cugir, indicating the place of production—"Cugir Mechanical Plant" (Uzina Mecanică Cugir), which was particularly active during the existence of the "Warsaw Pact" and is part of the state defense corporation RomArm.

Moreover, such secrecy primarily creates problems for Romania itself, as Russian propaganda actively exploits this issue for disinformation campaigns against official Bucharest. Therefore, it would be better to eliminate the opportunity for Russian abuse.

According to the aforementioned Radu Hossu, the Romanian authorities might have withheld information about actual supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine due to misguided reputational motives, as assisting a country defending itself from aggression is always morally justified.

In turn, the authors at Defense Romania are currently limited to assumptions about the nature of Romanian supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They believe that this includes firearms and ammunition from the aforementioned Uzina Mecanică Cugir, multiple rocket launchers like the APR-40, "122-mm howitzers" (likely referring to Romanian copies of the 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled artillery - ed.), and TAB-71 armored personnel carriers from the Warsaw Pact era.

At the same time, Defense Express emphasizes that the main mystery in this case is whether Romania provided its MiG-29s and T-72s to Ukraine as part of military assistance, which were retired and stored in preservation as of February 2022.