Four Ukrainian military aircraft, at least one probably a Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 fighter aircraft, unintentionally crossed NATO’s eastern air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and flew over Romania near dawn on Monday, official statements and local news reports said.
The incident took place during a mass Kremlin drone and missile attack against targets across Ukraine, with about one-third of Russian strike weapons targeting the west Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, near Ukraine’s border with Romania.
Romania’s Defense Ministry in a Monday, June 21 statement said NATO air defense radars detected twelve Ukrainian aircraft heading west at 3 a.m. local Eastern European Daylight Time (EEDT, or UTC+3, the same time zone as Ukraine), following emergency scrambles to avoid getting caught on the ground by incoming Russian missiles and drones targeting Ukrainian “airport infrastructure.”
The flight path of four of the twelve Ukrainian aircraft passed into Romanian airspace near the cities Sighetu Marmației and Vicovu de Sus, and the planes flew over NATO territory “for a few minutes” before returning to Ukrainian airspace, the official statement said.
There was no threat to Romanian national security and no Romanian persons or property were harmed in the incident, the statement said.
Video uploaded on Facebook at 5 a.m. EEDT by a Romanian user claiming to have made the recording near the town of Gura Peunei, Suceava region, showed a Soviet-era Su-27 fighter flying in dusk/dawn conditions at around 500 feet.
The Su-27 is a workhorse fighter, long operated by the Ukrainian Air Force. The plane is not used by any current NATO militaries. Ukrainian mainstream media widely reported the video confirmed a Ukrainian military aircraft flew over Romania.
[Note: The embedded X post included here purportedly shared the earlier Facebook video, which could not be independently verified for time and location, but shows a Su-27 (NATO: Flanker) or a derivative of that airframe (Su-30/34/35) of unknown origin, verified by Kyiv Post’s staff military aviation analyst. – Ed.]
The Ukrainian Air Force later in the day confirmed a military aircraft had crossed into Romanian airspace during combat operations, without giving details.
According to the Romanian Defense Ministry statement, two Romanian F-16 fighters took off at around 03:30 [EEDT] from the 86th Borcea Air Base for “aerial reconnaissance missions.” At around 05:00, a pair of Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft launched from the 57th Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base as reinforcements, the statement said. All four NATO fighters returned to base by 7 a.m.
Russia hit Ukraine on Monday with one of the heaviest air attacks of the entire war, launching 426 drones, including strike aircraft and decoys, and a mix of 24 cruise and ballistic missiles.
The main cities targeted were the capital Kyiv, the western city Ivano-Frankivsk, the southern city Odesa and the northeastern city Kharkiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an evening statement said the Russian strikes killed two people and injured fifteen, all civilians.
Ukrainian Air Force spokespersons later claimed air defense forces on the day shot down or disabled 403 of 426 incoming weapons. Ivano-Frankivsk Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv, in comments to local media, said the Russian strike against his city was the largest attack since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. News reports said industrial sites and warehouses were hit and four people were injured, one a child.
Zelensky, in an evening statement, said that “Russia’s attacks are always against humanity: a kindergarten, residential buildings, and other civilian infrastructure were burned in Kyiv. Ordinary houses were destroyed in Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk…We must field more interceptors. This is the solution that will allow us to protect ourselves.”
The Kremlin launches air strikes against targets in Ukraine daily, in some days limiting attacks to bomber runs against frontline positions and reconnaissance drones probing Ukrainian air defenses, and on others hurling more than 700 missiles and drones in air raids across the country.
Most of the Russian weapons impact in Ukraine, but not all. On July 10, a Russian decoy drone flew across Ukraine and made its way across Belarus to crash in Lithuania near the Šumskas border checkpoint, approximately 1 kilometer from the Belarusian border. Neither NATO nor Belarusian air defenses engaged the drone.
The most recent confirmed engagement by NATO air defenses of wayward Russian weapons fired at Ukraine took place on Jul. 25 2024, when Romanian air defense units deployed to the Danube region and armed with Gepard anti-aircraft cannon opened fire on a covey of Russian kamikaze drones probably with the mission of attacking grain storage and ship handling facilities in the Ukrainian riverine port city Izmail.
Reports said between five and fifteen Russian aircraft entered Romanian airspace as they made their attacks. It was not clear how many, if any, Russian drones were hit by Romanian air defenses. One Russian drone traveled 11 kilometers (7 miles) into Romanian territory before crashing. There were no reports of damage to people or property in Romania.
Moldova, a country along the Danube flight path used by Russian strike planners for attacks on Ukraine’s Danube River ports, most recently reported Russian attack drone violations of Moldovan airspace on Feb. 12-13 and Feb. 16. In those incidents, two drones crashed in southern Moldova, a former Soviet state not a member of NATO.