Romania’s Defense Ministry said early on Wednesday (24 July) that it scrambled fighter jets overnight as the Russian military carried out a series of drone attacks near its shared border with southern Ukraine.
The defense ministry said in a statement that two F-16 aircraft took off at 2:19 a.m. local time from the 86th Borcea Air Base, located around 126 kilometers east of the capital Bucharest. According to the statement, the fighter jets were tasked with monitoring “the aerial situation.”
Around the same time, Romania’s Tulcea County — which borders southern Ukraine’s Odesa region — was put on alert as Russian forces were said to have been carrying out drone attacks “against certain targets” near the NATO member’s border with Ukraine. Authorities did not specify where those attacks had taken place.
Since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Romania has on multiple occasions discovered drone debris near the border with its neighbor to the north. Authorities in the EU-member state have introduced measures to protect people living in and around the border area, including constructing air-raid shelters.
Every Time Russia Violated NATO Borders and Got Away With It
Since the beginning of the Russian full-scale war against Ukraine, there has been a concerning pattern of Russia violating NATO countries’ borders. From airspace incursions to suspected electronic warfare, these actions are seen as signs of a deliberate escalation by Moscow.
It’s deliberate and, importantly, logical within their strategy for dealing with NATO. They know that a bold stroke would likely trigger article 5, but if they can normalize a certain amount of activities that technically should but don’t trigger it, they hope they can undermine faith in the defense pact as a whole. Violating airspace is part of that.
For better or worse, NATO is fully aware of Russia’s long game, and has a goal of ramping up readiness to meet a Russia that has fully committed to a wartime economy.
At this point all that remains to be seen is whether the default outcome of a general conflict can be somehow avoided. It is hard to imagine how nuclear dictators in the modern era can be kept in check peacefully.
