Held Together with Wire: Inside Romania’s Neglected Arms Industry

At the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, in a small Romanian town called Zarnesti, there’s a building where the windows are broken and the doors are tied shut with wire. It looks like nobody’s used it in years. Yet it is actually full of explosives. This is Romania's defence industry. Or a sizeable chunk of it, anyway. Romarm National Company is Romania's largest arms manufacturer and it is 100% owned by the state . It is also the parent company of 15 subsidiaries spread across the country, from Bucharest to small industrial towns like Cugir, Moreni and Resita.