In the endless Danubian Plain, some 60 kilometers north of Bucharest, road rollers smooth out a stretch of asphalt. "We've got two years to build a 21-kilometer section of highway and two interchanges. That's very fast for Romania," explained Emanuele Lancellotti, who works for the Italian construction company Pizzarotti.

In 2022, Pizzarotti and its Romanian partner Retter secured "Lot 1" of the future A7 highway, a strategic project that will eventually link Bucharest with the Ukrainian border. This Eastern European country has dreamed of this 500-kilometer north-south axis for decades. However, with the war in Ukraine the project has now "taken on enormous importance," said Lancellotti.

"This highway will above all help Romania by connecting certain parts [of the northeast] of our country that were previously disadvantaged," said Guido Retter, head of the company that bears his name. He is offended that the Kyiv press has been a little too quick to make the project a symbol of Romania's support for its large northern neighbor.

Admittedly, the A7 project, which was financed by the post-Covid-19 European recovery plan, was launched before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the work is progressing at an unusually fast pace for a country hitherto famous for its slowness in carrying out major construction. Since the beginning of the war, "we have been speeding up and focusing a little more," said social-democratic Minister of Transport Sorin Grindeanu, in Bucharest, who pledges "to finish the A7 by 2026."

Once completed, the Moldova highway (as it is also known) will facilitate the transportation of Ukrainian grain to the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta and ease the shipment of heavy weaponry to Ukraine going the other direction. Additionally, it will play a crucial role in the defense capabilities of a country that constitutes NATO's "eastern flank." In August 2023, Ben Hodges, the former commander of US forces in Europe, criticized the "deplorable state" of Romania's infrastructure, which "[would] not help Romanian or NATO forces move quickly to repel a Russian attack."

It currently takes almost seven hours of poor-quality road to get from Bucharest to Siret, the main point of passage between the two countries. To the east, the Danube delta, which forms a natural border between Ukraine and Romania, remains a traffic nightmare, with its ferry crossings and unpaved roads. "Before the war, exchanges with Ukraine were close to zero," said Grindeanu, as an excuse for the deplorable level of connection with this neighbor. "But now, everything is increasing," he promised, pointing to the scale of the projects underway on the large map unfolded on his desk.

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