Romania’s Ministry of National Defense announced on Thursday evening (December 26th) that the country’s radar system detected a small flying object – possibly a drone – entering the airspace of Tulcea County in southeastern Romania, about 6 kilometers from the coastline. The radar first picked up the signal of the flying object at 19:04 Greenwich Mean Time.
The Ministry of National Defense immediately issued a warning to residents of Tulcea County, urging them to take shelter and initiated emergency procedures to scramble fighter jets. However, the radar lost the signal of the invading flying object at 19:09 Greenwich Mean Time.
The Ministry of National Defense stated, “There is currently no information about a possible target impact on our territory.”
Romania is a member of the European Union and NATO, sharing a 650-kilometer (400-mile) border with Ukraine. Over the past year and a half, due to Moscow’s attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure, wreckage of Russian drones has repeatedly fallen on Romanian soil.
In October of this year, Romania’s radar detected several instances of drone signals intruding into the country’s airspace. Fighter jets were unable to intercept them, and no crash sites were found. Officials in the country suggested that these incidents may be the result of cyber interference.
(Translated and revised based on a report by Reuters)