Romania scrambled fighter jets yesterday when a drone breached the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure near the border, the defence ministry said.
Defence Minister Ionut Mosteanu said the F-16 pilots came close to taking down the drone as it was flying very low before it left national airspace toward Ukraine.
A threat of drone strikes also prompted Poland to deploy aircraft and close an airport in the eastern city of Lublin yesterday, three days after it shot down Russian drones in its airspace with the backing of aircraft from its Nato allies.
Romania, a European Union and Nato state which shares a 650-km border with Ukraine, has had Russian drone fragments fall onto its territory repeatedly since Russia began waging war on its neighbour.
Yesterday, it scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and later two Eurofighters – part of German air policing missions in Romania – and warned citizens in the southeastern county of Tulcea near the Danube and its Ukrainian border to take cover, the defence ministry said in a statement.
It added the jets detected a drone in national airspace, which they followed until it dropped off the radar 20km southwest of the village of Chilia Veche.
Mosteanu told private television station Antena 3 that helicopters will survey the area near the border to look for potential drone parts, “but all information at this moment indicates the drone exited airspace to Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on social media platform X that data showed the drone breached about 10km into Romanian territory and operated in Nato airspace for around 50 minutes.
“It is an obvious expansion of the war by Russia – and this is exactly how they act,” he said.
&uuid=(email))