Two Romanian F-16s in flight at the 86th Air Base in Borcea, Romania, 13 November 2023. Photo: EPA / Robert Ghement
Romania has condemned Russia’s “reckless behaviour” after a drone violated its airspace during a series of airstrikes on western Ukraine on Saturday, forcing Bucharest to scramble two F-16 fighter jets to track the drone for nearly an hour, the Romanian Defence Ministry announced on Sunday.
According to Ionut Mosteanu, the Romanian Defence Minister, the F-16s “were very close to shooting down” the drone during the incident, which came just days after an unprecedented breach of Polish airspace by 19 Russian drones earlier in the week.
“The UAV did not overfly populated areas and did not pose an imminent threat to the civilian population,” the Romanian Defence Ministry said.
The episode came amid a Russian air assault on western Ukrainian ports located on the Danube River, which forms over 300 kilometers of the roughly 650-kilometer Romanian-Ukrainian border.
“Romania condemns Russia’s reckless behavior, which threatens regional stability. Together with our NATO Allies, we remain vigilant and ready to defend every inch of Allied airspace,” Mosteanu said.
Condemning the incursion, as well as a wider series of ballistic missile and drone strikes that regional authorities in Ukraine say killed seven civilians and injured 34 more over the past day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky labelled the incident an “obvious expansion” of Russia’s war and called for further sanctions against Moscow.
“The Russian military knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air. Their routes are always calculated. This cannot be a coincidence [or] a mistake,” Zelensky said.
Romania is a member state of NATO, and hosts one of the military alliance’s eight permanent multinational battalions, as well as various allied air policing deployments and a US ballistic missile defence system.
Bucharest has repeatedly reported Russian drone fragments falling in its territory since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, most recently in October, when Russian drone debris was discovered in a rural area of Romania close to the Ukrainian border.
In February, the Romanian Parliament passed a bill permitting the country’s military to shoot down foreign drones that illegally enter or breach its national airspace.
