 "Romania scrambles Nato jets after deepest-ever drone incursion, calls it Russian provocation")
Romanian and German Nato fighter jets were scrambled on Tuesday near Romania’s border with Ukraine after a drone penetrated deeper into Romanian airspace than ever before, an incident Bucharest described as a Russian provocation.
According to a Reuters report, Defence Minister Ionut Mosteanu said Nato pilots nearly shot down the drone, which repeatedly entered the alliance member’s airspace, but refrained due to concerns about causing damage on the ground.
Later, fragments of a drone without an explosive charge were recovered on Romanian territory.
“We are dealing with a new Russian provocation against Romania, a drone which the Romanian army and German Eurofighters have tried to shoot down,” Reuters quoted Mosteanu as saying.
“My assumption is that (the pilots) analysed the potential collateral damage and … chose not to engag,” Mosteanu added.
Russian drones had struck Ukrainian ports overnight near the border with Romania, which lies across the Danube River.
Tuesday’s breach was the 13th that Romania has reported into its airspace since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In addition to being the deepest, it was also the first to take place during daylight, rather than at night.
Drone tracked more than 100 km inland
The Romanian defence ministry said it initially scrambled two Eurofighters from a German air-policing mission in Romania, which tracked a drone in the southeastern county of Tulcea before it re-entered Ukraine.
The army later scrambled two Romanian F-16 fighter jets after radar showed a second airspace breach in the neighbouring county of Galati. Mosteanu said an additional two Eurofighters followed.
The ministry said the planes tracked the drone moving towards the county of Vrancea, which does not share a border with Ukraine and is more than 100 km inland.
Residents of all three counties were warned to take cover, a warning that was later lifted.
Romania shares a 650-km (400-mile) border with Ukraine.
On a visit to U.S. troops at Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, General Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said a new capability able to shoot down drones will be deployed to Romania.
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View All“We have tested and it is in the final stages of being employed. Romanian soldiers and other alliance soldiers have been trained on this capability and I know you’re going to see this capability in the (Danube) Delta very soon.”
Romania has legislation in place enabling it to shoot down drones during peacetime if lives or property are at risk, but has not yet made full use of it.
Tensions have mounted along Europe’s eastern flank in recent months after suspected Russian drones breached the airspace of several Nato states.
The latest breach comes as US and Ukrainian officials have been holding clutch talks to narrow the gaps between them over a plan to end the war, after agreeing to modify a US proposal that Kyiv and its European allies saw as a Kremlin wish list.
With inputs from agencies
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