Romania says Russian drone entered its airspace

The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Sunday accused Moscow of “reckless escalation” after a Russian drone flew through Romania’s airspace, the second incursion over a NATO country in less than a week.

Tensions have run high in Eastern Europe’s skies since more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace last week, prompting NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot some of them down. That incident drew condemnation from Western officials who called it an escalation of the war in Ukraine. Taken together, the episodes further underscore how drones are making the Ukraine war felt outside the country’s borders.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, echoed those sentiments Sunday after the incident a day earlier in Romania.

“The violation of Romanian airspace by Russian drones is yet another unacceptable breach of an EU member state’s sovereignty,” she wrote on social media. “This continued reckless escalation threatens regional security.”

Romania, a NATO member, had said late Saturday that its air force had detected a Russian drone in the country’s air space. Its Defense Ministry said in a statement that the country had deployed two F-16 aircraft shortly after 6 p.m. local time to monitor Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure near the Romanian border. About 20 minutes later, they detected the drone in Romanian airspace.

The drone did not fly over “populated areas and did not pose an imminent threat to the civilian population,” the ministry’s statement said.

In a statement Sunday, the Defense Ministry said that its pilots had “received authorization to shoot down” the drone but that “at the moments when they had direct contact, they assessed the collateral risks and decided not to open fire.” The ministry condemned what it called Russia’s “irresponsible actions,” saying “they represent a new challenge posed to regional security and stability in the Black Sea area.”

Romania’s foreign minister, Oana-Silvia Toiu, said on social media that the Romanian air force tracked the Russian drone in the country’s airspace for 50 minutes before it left without causing any damage or casualties. She called the intrusion “unacceptable and reckless.”

As of Sunday night, the Russian Defense Ministry had not responded publicly to the Romanian comments. And there was no immediate comment from NATO.

The scrambling of NATO fighter jets in response to the Russian drone incursion of Polish airspace marked the first time in the alliance’s history that alliance fighters had engaged enemy targets in a member’s airspace, officials said.

The incident prompted Poland’s government to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, a rarely used mechanism that is triggered when a member is under threat and prompts a formal discussion within the alliance.

Russia denied targeting Poland and said that its drones had gone off track after their navigation systems were jammed.

“There were no targets marked on Polish territory,” Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday. He also claimed that Russia’s drones did not have the capacity to reach Polish airspace, which is false.

The weekend incursion was not the first time a Russian drone has crossed into Romanian territory.

In September 2023, Romania said that debris from a Russian drone had landed on its soil across the Danube River from Ukraine. Russia had been conducting a series of nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian grain ports on the Danube delta to block Ukraine from exporting its agricultural products via a route that runs down the river and into the Black Sea.

Romania’s Defense Ministry also said in September 2024 that it had found fragments from Russian drones that had landed in Romania on the banks of the Danube River.

In a social media post about the apparent Russian drone incursion into Romania on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said that the Russian military “knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air.”

“This cannot be a coincidence, a mistake, or the initiative of some lower-level commanders,” he added. “It is an obvious expansion of the war by Russia — and this is exactly how they act. Small steps at first, and eventually big losses.”

Hours later, Ukraine’s military said its uncrewed aircraft had attacked the Kirishi refinery outside St. Petersburg, some 500 miles from Ukraine. Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the Russian region, said that three drones had been shot down and that falling debris had caused a fire at the plant. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, and Drozdenko said the fire had been extinguished by later Sunday morning.

While Ukraine has repeatedly struck oil refineries and other Russian energy infrastructure, its target Sunday was particularly significant. Kirishi is the only major oil refinery in northwestern Russia, and it is one of the country’s largest, producing things like motor fuel, paraffin and roofing materials.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.