From escorting to firing: Romania changes how it meets Russia’s wandering drones

For the first known time, a Romanian fighter jet has fired on and destroyed a drone that violated the country's airspace. The intercept happened during a large Russian overnight attack on Ukraine that pushed some of the explosive drones toward the Romanian border. Bucharest has not said where the drone came from.

Russia's missiles and explosive drones batter Ukrainian homes and civilian infrastructure night after night, and some of those drones wander across borders into NATO states, where allied jets only lately opened fire after years of merely tracking them.

A pilot, an empty field, and an air-to-air missile

Romanian President Nicușor Dan announced the shootdown on X, saying a pilot flying an F-16 downed the drone around 11:00 on 24 July 2026. He noted the target fell over an uninhabited area, so the pilot could fire without endangering anyone below. 

"At present, specialist teams from the relevant agencies are surveying the area to establish all the circumstances of the incident," Dan said some 30 minutes after the strike.

Romania's Defense Ministry detailed the sequence. Radar detected the drone at 09:39, roughly 20 km east of Sulina in the Danube delta. It then entered national airspace and flew a Sulina–Brăila–Fetești–Buzău route. Two Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon jets on a NATO air policing mission from Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase went up, along with two Romanian F-16s from the 86th airbase at Fetești. At 11:02, one of the Romanian jets struck the drone with an air-to-air missile over an uninhabited area near Padina, in Buzău county.

The drone's flight path points to the Black Sea as its way in — the same route Russian drones tend to take when they go after the nearby Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail.

Until now, Romanian jets had only escorted a Russian drone near the Ukrainian border until it disappeared from radars. Overnight on 29 May, during a Russian attack on Odesa Oblast, a Geran-2 drone crashed into a 10-story residential building in Galați, hospitalizing two people and forcing 70 to evacuate.

Russia's overnight barrage on Ukraine

The intercept coincided with one of Russia's mass overnight strikes. Ukraine's Air Force reported that Russia launched 180 strike drones — Shahed types, including jet-powered ones, plus Gerbera, Italmas, and Parodiya decoy drones — and five X-59/69 guided missiles by preliminary count from the Black Sea areas, Russian regions and occupied territory. By 08:00, air defenses had downed or suppressed 160 drones and four missiles, though one missile and 14 drones hit across nine locations.

In Odesa Oblast, a Russian strike on a residential sector injured a woman and a child overnight, damaging an apartment roof, homes, cars, and an enterprise, the head of the Odesa Oblast military administration, Oleh Kiper, reported. 

"The residential sector and industrial infrastructure were struck. Unfortunately, a woman and a 4-year-old child were injured," he said. 

Farther south, Russia hit the Izmail district — the part of Odesa Oblast bordering Romania — damaging homes and a business without casualties, the district military administration said.

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