Romania Expels a Russian Diplomat and Recalls Its Ambassador After Four Drone Incursions in Four Days
Bucharest, 27 July 2026
Key points
- Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu summoned Russian Ambassador Vladimir Lipaev on 27 July, handed him a formal protest over airspace violations on 24–26 July, and served a note requiring one member of the Russian mission to leave Romania within five days
- Bucharest also recalled its own ambassador from Moscow for consultations, and showed Lipaev fragments of a drone destroyed on Romanian territory which prosecutors' investigations had confirmed to be of Russian origin
- Romanian F-16s destroyed drones on three consecutive days — 24 July over Buzău county, a second on 25 July, and a third over territorial waters at about 10:13 on 26 July; President Nicușor Dan identified the first as a Shahed-type
- A fourth target crossed on the morning of 27 July, tracked about 36 kilometres east of Sulina with two F-16s airborne from Fetești at 08:53; it moved through Romanian airspace towards Ukraine and no shoot-down was reported
Romania expelled a Russian diplomat and recalled its ambassador from Moscow on 27 July, after four drone events in four days — three of them ended by Romanian fighters, the fourth crossing without a shot — and rested the protest on drone fragments its own prosecutors have confirmed as Russian.
The engagement chain that produced the shoot-downs is comparatively new. On 24 July NATO's Combined Air Operations Centre at Torrejón, under SACEUR's authority, cleared a Romanian F-16 against a Shahed-type drone over Buzău county after two Italian Typhoons had engaged and missed — 83 minutes from detection to destruction, over uninhabited ground. Romania had run the opposite case on 29 May, when a Geran-2 struck a Galați apartment block and airborne F-16s did not fire, the track being short, low and over populated ground. Lipaev was told on Monday that the violations were "inadmissible and intolerable" and that Russia bore sole responsibility.
Romania has not said why the fourth target drew fighters but no shot. Trajectory, time in Romanian airspace, engagement authority and public-safety limits all bear on it, and none has been stated.
An expulsion is how Bucharest converts a run of air-defence events into a state-to-state matter, and the forensic confirmation is what lets it. The cost side is what the repetition exposes: four events in four days, three answered with fighter pairs and air-to-air missiles against one-way drones costing a fraction of either. The assignment question stands — whether a sustained low-altitude track can be handed to the cheaper ground-based layer, with the Merops system operational at Capu Midia since April, without losing the identification and public-safety conditions that made the shots possible. And the drones are the visible half: as Großwald Signal No. 110 recorded, the cargo ship Golden Leo — shelled on 19 July carrying corn out of Chornomorsk — sank off Odesa the same weekend, in a corridor Romania's exclusive economic zone touches but its air-policing mandate does not cover.
Related · Russian drones over Romanian territory
First damage from a Russian drone on Romanian territory at Galați; the ambassador is summoned (25 April 2026)
Romania tests the Merops counter-drone system at Capu Midia (24 April 2026)
