Romania scrambled fighter jets on Saturday when a drone breached the country's airspace during a Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure near the border, the defense ministry said.
Defense Minister Ionut Mosteanu said the F-16 pilots came close to taking down the drone as it was flying very low before it left national airspace toward Ukraine. A threat of drone strikes also prompted Poland to deploy aircraft and close an airport in the eastern city of Lublin on Saturday, three days after it shot down Russian drones in its airspace with the backing of aircraft from its NATO allies. Romania, a European Union and NATO state which shares a 650-km (400-mile) border with Ukraine, has had Russian drone fragments fall onto its territory repeatedly since Russia began waging war on its neighbor.
On Saturday, it scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and later two Eurofighters — part of German air policing missions in Romania — and warned citizens in the southeastern county of Tulcea near the Danube and its Ukrainian border to take cover, the defense ministry said in a statement.
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