Three Russian drones targeting Ukraine stray into Nato-member Romania, says air force chief

EveningStandard:  Three Russian drones sent to target Ukraine strayed into Romania, a Nato member, according to Kyiv’s air force chief.

Ukrainian forces destroyed 25 Russian attack drones out of 38 launched overnight, Mykola Oleshchiuk said on Thursday.

“Last night, the enemy used 38 Shahed-131/136 attack drones, attacking Ukrainian infrastructure in several areas, including the south of Odesa region and central Ukraine,” explained Ukraine’s air force chief.

He added that three other drones “were lost after crossing the state border with Romania”. He gave no more details and the timing of these alleged incidents was not clear.

Drone fragments were found around a Romanian village near the Danube and Ukraine border after overnight Russian attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure, Romanian television station Digi24 reported on Thursday.

Fragments from a Russian Geran 1/2 drone were found around a village near the Danube and the border with Ukraine, the Romanian defence ministry said later on Thursday, confirming the media reports.

There were also reports that Romanian F-16 fighter jets were scrambled in response to drones heading into the country on Tuesday night and that three of the unmanned aircraft plummeted to the ground causing fires.

Romanian territory is just a few hundred metres from the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail, in the southern Odesa region, which was attacked by drones for the second night in a row.

Odesa governor Oleh Kiper said two people were wounded when drone debris hit a private house in Izmail district.

Authorities in the capital Kyiv and in the Zhytomyr region said those regions had also been targeted.

Zhytomyr’s governor said that air defence systems hit most of the 10 aerial targets overnight, but drone debris damaged 10 private houses and one infrastructure facility.

The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said that drones attacked the capital from different directions, but all of them were destroyed by air defence forces on the approaches.

Mr Popko said there were no reports of damage or casualties in Kyiv.

At a Nato meeting in Washington earlier this month, new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer appealed to allies to maintain support for Kyiv in its war against Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky also attended a meeting of European leaders at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire last week and held talks with Sir Keir in No10.

He is appealing to allies to allow West-supplied missiles to be used to target air bases deep in Russia from where aircraft are flying to launch gliding bombs on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Putin met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Kremlin on Wednesday.