Overview
- President Nicușor Dan and the defence ministry said a Romanian F-16 shot down the drone over the village of Padina at about 11:02 on Friday with fragments falling into an uninhabited wheat field and no injuries.
- Romanian radar first detected the object near the Black Sea coast earlier in the morning and two Romanian F-16s plus two Italian Eurofighter Typhoons were scrambled to monitor and respond.
- Authorities have opened a multi-agency probe to determine the drone’s origin and type; officials have not publicly attributed responsibility and investigators are collecting debris and data from the crash site.
- An anonymous military source quoted to Reuters and past NATO and EU statements have pointed to Russian strikes in the region, but Romanian officials say attribution for this object remains unconfirmed.
- The incident marks Romania’s first confirmed shootdown since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and highlights NATO air policing operations and growing civilian risk after earlier incursions that in May wounded two people in Galați.