The Romanian defense ministry announced on Saturday that a drone, believed to be Russian, violated the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on infrastructure in neighboring Ukraine. This incident comes just days after Poland also reported a Russian drone incursion, prompting both NATO members to take defensive measures.
According to a defense ministry statement, Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to monitor the situation. The jets “detected a drone in national airspace” and tracked it until it “disappeared from the radar” near the village of Chilia Veche, close to the border with Ukraine. The ministry stated that the drone did not fly over populated areas and did not pose an “imminent threat” to the population.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fragments of Russian drones have repeatedly crashed on Romanian soil, especially as Moscow has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian ports along the Danube River, which forms a natural border with Romania. In response to this recurring threat, Romania’s parliament passed a law in February that allows the military to shoot down drones that illegally breach its airspace.
The incident has drawn strong condemnation from NATO allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented on the drone incursions into both Polish and Romanian airspace, calling them a “deliberate expansion of the war by Russia.”
NATO has been on high alert since the beginning of the week. After the Polish incident, the alliance announced a new defensive initiative called “Eastern Sentry” to bolster the defense of its eastern flank. This program will involve deploying military assets from various allied nations, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, to strengthen air and ground-based defenses against the growing threat of Russian aerial provocations.