February 10 (SeeNews) - Romania’s defence ministry said on Friday that the aerial surveillance system of the country's Air Force detected on February 10 an aerial target, suspected to be a cruise missile launched from a Russian ship in the Black Sea, that had crossed the airspace of Moldova and Ukraine.
After crossing the two countries’ airspace, the suspected cruise missile re-entered Ukraine, without ever intersecting with Romania’s airspace, the Romanian defence ministry said in a press release.
At 1018 local time, the Moldovan defence ministry detected a missile that crossed the country’s airspace over the Transnistrian Mocra commune and the Cosauti commune in the Soroca district, heading towards Ukraine, it said in a separate press release on Friday.
The Romanian defence ministry said the nearest point of the target’s trajectory to Romania’s airspace was recorded by radar systems approximately 35 km north-east of the country’s border.
Romanian authorities applied all standard procedures from the moment the launch was detected until the situation was fully clarified, the country’s defence ministry added.
At 1038 local time, two airborne MiG-21 LanceR aircraft of the Romanian Air Force and part of the air policing service under NATO command, were redirected towards northern Romania to supplement reaction options. After roughly two minutes, the situation was clarified and the two aircraft resumed their initial mission.
Prior to the Romanian defence ministry’s statement, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a social media post that two Kaliber cruise missiles crossed Ukraine's border with Moldova at 1018 local time. Zaluzhnyi added that the missiles crossed into Romania’s airspace at 1033, to then re-enter Ukraine’s airspace at the crossing point of the borders of the three states.
On January 15, the Moldovan defence ministry dispatched a bomb squad to investigate missile fragments found in northern Moldova a day earlier, it said in a press release at the time.