An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has crashed in Romania, causing a fire in the latest incident showing the risk of the Ukraine war spilling over into NATO states as the alliance stages exercises this week to prepare for the threat posed by Russia. Romania’s defense ministry said that at 2.23 a.m. local time Thursday, two NATO F-18 aircraft were scrambled after drones were detected north of Tulcea county near the border with Ukraine. One of the drones crashed just over an hour later in an uninhabited area.
No damage was reported but the incident is the latest in which drones have been entering— and sometimes exploding —in NATO member states during the Ukraine war. Russia's aggression has largely been blamed for the spate of incursions, which include Ukrainian drones that allies have said were driven off course through electronic jamming by Moscow. Newsweek has contacted NATO and the Russian defense ministry for comment.
Thursday’s incident took place just over two miles north-east of Grindu in Romania’s Tulcea County. The Danube region’s proximity to Ukraine puts it on the front line of drone incursions as the war in its neighbor continues to rage. Later on Thursday, Romania scrambled F-16 aircraft after a small maritime drone was spotted around 80 miles east of Constanța.
This comes only days after a NATO F-18 fighter jet operating on an air policing mission shot down a drone on Sunday that unlawfully entered Romanian airspace, the fourth unmanned craft brought down over the country this year. These incidents follow Bucharest’s assessment on July 28 that at least 19 drones had entered Romania’s airspace this year. Since the war started in February 2022, there have been 50 cases of drones or drone fragments identified on its territory.
On May 29 a drone identified by Romanian authorities as Russian crashed into an apartment building in the city of Galați, injuring a woman and a child. On April 25, more than 200 people were evacuated when drone debris and explosive material also fell in Galați. After Romania shot down three drones between July 24 and 26, one of which was confirmed to be a Russian-made Shahed / Geran 2 model, Romania’s Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in Bucharest, expelled a Russian diplomat and recalled its ambassador from Moscow.
Other members of the alliance’s eastern bloc have also faced drone incursions in recent months. On May 23, a drone crashed into Lake Drīdzis in Krāslava Municipality in the east of Latvia and detonated on contact with the water. On May 7, two suspected stray drones crossed into Latvia from Russia, one of which exploded at an oil storage facility in the Rēzekne region, local media reported.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
