Bucharest, Romania – The Romanian Ministry of Defense announced that a pilot aboard an F-16 fighter jet shot down a second drone violating the country’s airspace in two consecutive days. The drone was downed in an uninhabited area near the border with Ukraine. This incident follows Romania’s announcement on Friday that it had shot down its first drone, marking its first successful interception of the aircraft after dozens of previous airspace violations. Romanian prosecutors confirmed that preliminary investigations indicated debris from the first drone originated from Moscow.
In the same context, Romanian President Nicholas Dan stated that the second drone was shot down at 8:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. GMT), 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of the city of Svantu Gheorghe in the Danube Delta. The Ministry of Defense explained that radar detected the airspace intrusion at 8:22 a.m., and two F-16 fighter jets were immediately scrambled to intercept the target. The ministry did not officially identify the origin or ownership of the intercepted drone.
A growing record of breaches and regional repercussions
It is worth noting that Romania shares a long land border with Ukraine, stretching 650 kilometers (400 miles). Bucharest has previously reported that Russian drones have violated its airspace approximately 30 times since Moscow began its intensified attacks on Ukrainian ports along the Danube River following the outbreak of war in 2012.
Last May, the region witnessed a dangerous escalation when a Russian drone crashed into a residential building in the southeastern Romanian city of Galati, near the Ukrainian border, injuring two people. This incident marked the first airstrike targeting a densely populated area within a NATO member state and resulting in casualties since the start of the conflict.
Military warnings of increased attacks near the Black Sea
On the military front, the Romanian army chief of staff, General Georgeta Vlad, stated on Friday that the ongoing Russian attacks on the area surrounding the Ukrainian port of Odessa had escalated significantly, placing additional and direct pressure on vital energy and trade routes in the Black Sea region, and raising increasing security concerns among neighboring European countries.
