Authorities in Romania and Latvia, two NATO allies that have supported Ukraine in its two-and-a-half-year conflict with Russia, announced on Sunday that they were looking into incidents in which Russian drones crashed after entering their airspace.
The incidents prompted officials to call for measures to act jointly to counter Russia air incursions. NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana denounced the incidents as “irresponsible and potentially dangerous,” while saying there was no indication of a deliberate attack on Alliance member-states.
The Romanian defense ministry said the “radar supervision system identified and tracked the path of a drone which entered national airspace and then exited toward Ukraine.”
Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to monitor the incursion. Residents of the southeastern Romanian counties of Tulcea and Constanta were warned to take cover. “From existing data, the possibility of an impact zone on national territory was identified, in an uninhabited area near the village of Periprava,” the ministry added.
Ministry personnel were searching for the area of impact. In Latvia, which borders both Russia and its close ally Belarus, President Edgars Rinkevics posted on social media platform X that his government sought a common NATO response.
“The number of such incidents is increasing along the Eastern flank of NATO, and we must address them collectively,” Rinkevics wrote.
The LETA news agency quoted the defense ministry as saying initial investigation showed that the drone had entered Latvian airspace from Belarus and crashed near the city of Rezekne.
Leonids Kalnins, Commander of Latvia’s Joint Headquarters, said experts believed the drone “did not have a specific purpose to fly into Latvia.”
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