Nato member Romania said it had informed western allies after at least one Russian attack drone crashed on its territory during a strike on a nearby region of Ukraine, as one of Kyiv’s senior officers said he expected Russian attacks to largely run out of steam in the next six weeks.
Ukraine’s military said its air defence units intercepted 25 of 38 explosive-laden drones fired by Russian forces at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure early on Thursday, in a second successive night of attacks that focused on the Odesa region and other southern parts of the country.
Kyiv said three drones crossed into Romania, which borders Ukraine and Moldova near Ukrainian Danube river ports close to the Black Sea, which are frequent targets for Russia as it tries to prevent shipping of food and other cargo in the area.
“More heinous attacks have been perpetrated by Russia against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. Debris has been found on Romanian territory. We have informed and are co-ordinating with our allies on this matter. Romania strongly condemns these irresponsible actions,” Romanian foreign minister Luminita Odobescu wrote on social media.
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The Romanian defence ministry said two Finnish fighter jets that are part of Nato patrol operations over the Black Sea state were scrambled during the Russian drone attack on Ukraine early on Thursday, and that ministry personnel were searching for drones that may have crashed on Romanian territory on Wednesday and Thursday.
“With reference to the investigations initiated yesterday, on July 24th ... up to this moment, the remains of a Geran1/2-type drone of Russian origin were identified at the first of the three locations identified as possible areas of incidence,” the ministry said, referring to a Russian copy of the Shahed attack drones supplied to Moscow by Iran.
The debris was found in an area where there are no inhabitants or infrastructure, the ministry said, as Romanian television broadcast footage of a charred and still-smoking patch of forest where reporters said the drone crashed to earth.
Russian attack drones also crashed in Romania last year and a Russian missile passed through the airspace of Poland, another Nato member, but the countries and the alliance have played down the incidents rather than risk direct confrontation with Moscow.
At least one person was injured and several buildings and vehicles were damaged on Thursday in Ukrainian artillery and drone attacks on the Russian border region of Belgorod, according its governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Russia has evacuated many civilians from the region and restricted entry to it, while launching a new ground assault across the border into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, in a so far unsuccessful bid to create what the Kremlin has called a buffer or security zone.
Heavy fighting continued in several sectors of the 1,000km front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have been creeping forward for well over a year but have only captured the ruins of two small cities – Bakhmut and Avdiivka – and a number of abandoned or sparsely populated villages.
“It’s hard. But the enemy’s offensive capabilities are not limitless and they suffer so many losses,” Oleksandr Pivnenko, the commander of Ukraine’s national guard, told the country’s Ukrinform news agency.
“I think that in another month or month-and-a-half, they will not be able to conduct active assaults in many directions at once, and will go on the defensive whatever happens. And in that time we need to form our divisions and train them.”
Ukrainian police in the eastern city of Dnipro arrested a man suspected of shooting dead former nationalist deputy Iryna Farion last week in the western city of Lviv. Prosecutors have not said what motivated the killing.
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