An “alert” was also triggered in Romania, (following Poland), which scrambled fighter jets when an unmanned aerial vehicle violated its national airspace during a Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure near the border, the country’s Defense Ministry announced.
Romania, a member of the European Union and NATO, shares a 650-kilometer border with Ukraine and has repeatedly recorded debris from Russian drones falling on its territory, as Moscow attacks Ukrainian port infrastructure on the opposite bank of the Danube River.
The ministry announced that radar initially detected the signal of an unmanned aircraft 8 kilometers inside national airspace, near the villages of Periprava and Kilia Veche in Tulcea County.
The drone signal disappeared from radar before reappearing intermittently for 12 minutes near villages in Galati County, it added.
Romania deployed Eurofighters and F-16s
Romania scrambled two Eurofighters -from the German air policing mission in Romania- and later two Romanian F-16 fighters and warned citizens in the southeastern counties of Tulcea and Galati to take cover, the ministry said.
The ministry added that it has no information about drone crashes on Romanian soil.
Poland, a NATO member country that borders western Ukraine, temporarily closed today the airports of Rzeszow and Lublin in the southeastern part of the country and preemptively scrambled Polish and allied aircraft to protect its airspace.
10 killed and 37 wounded in Russian bombardment of Ukraine – 470 drones and 18 missiles launched by Moscow
Meanwhile, ten people were killed and another 37 wounded (including 12 children) by a Russian strike in Ternopil, western Ukraine, local authorities said Wednesday morning.
“In Ternopil, nine-story residential buildings were hit (…) dozens of people were injured and unfortunately nine people lost their lives,” Volodymyr Zelensky noted in a social media post.
The Russian overnight attack also caused damage to energy infrastructure and transportation facilities, he added.
“Every brutal attack against civilian life shows that the pressure on Russia is insufficient. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this,” he noted, asking Kyiv’s allies for help with anti-aircraft defense missiles.
Russia used more than 470 unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and 48 missiles in its overnight attack, the Ukrainian president also clarified.
