Hours after Romania reported that a Russian drone had flown through its airspace amid heightened tensions in Eastern Europe’s skies, Ukrainian drones struck a major Russian oil refinery early Sunday.
The brief incursion in Romania on Saturday came only days after Russian drones entered Polish airspace, prompting condemnation from Western officials over what they called an escalation of the war in Ukraine. Taken together, the episodes further underscored how drones were making the Ukraine war felt outside the country’s borders.
Ukraine’s military said its unmanned aircraft had attacked the Kirishi refinery outside St. Petersburg, some 500 miles from Ukraine. Aleksandr Drozdenko, the governor of the Russian region, said that three drones had been shot down and that falling debris had caused a fire at the plant. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, and Mr. Drozdenko said the fire had been extinguished by later Sunday morning.
While Ukraine has repeatedly struck oil refineries and other Russian energy infrastructure, its target on Sunday was particularly significant. Kirishi is the only major oil refinery in northwestern Russia, and it is one of the country’s largest, producing things like motor fuel, paraffin and roofing materials.
The overnight attack on the refinery took place hours after Romania said on Saturday that its air force had detected a Russian drone in the country’s air space.
The Defense Ministry of Romania, a NATO member, said in a statement that the country had deployed two F-16 aircraft shortly after 6 p.m. local time to monitor Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure near the Romanian border. About 20 minutes later, they detected the drone in Romanian airspace.
Romania’s foreign minister, Oana-Silvia Toiu, said on social media that the Romanian Air Force tracked the Russian drone in the country’s airspace for 50 minutes before it left without causing any damage or casualties. She called the intrusion “unacceptable and reckless.”
The Defense Ministry said the drone had not flown over populated areas or posed an imminent danger to people’s safety.
As of Sunday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry had not responded publicly to the Romanian comments.
When more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace last week, NATO scrambled fighter jets to shoot some of them down. It was the first time in NATO’s history that alliance fighters had engaged enemy targets in a member’s airspace, officials said. The incident prompted Poland’s government to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, a rarely used mechanism that is triggered when a member is under threat and prompts a formal discussion within the alliance.
Russia denied targeting Poland and said that its drones had gone off track after their navigation systems were jammed.
“There were no targets marked on Polish territory,” Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday. He also claimed that Russia’s drones did not have the capacity to reach Polish airspace, which is false.
The weekend incursion was not the first time a Russian drone has crossed into Romanian territory.
In September 2023, Romania said that debris from a Russian drone had landed on its soil across the Danube River from Ukraine. Russia had been conducting a series of nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian grain ports on the Danube delta to block Ukraine from exporting its agricultural products via a route that runs down the river and into the Black Sea.
Romania’s Defense Ministry also said in September 2024 that it had found fragments from Russian drones that had landed in Romania on the banks of the Danube River.
In a social media post about the apparent Russian drone incursion into Romania on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the Russian military “knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air.”
“This cannot be a coincidence, a mistake, or the initiative of some lower-level commanders,” he added. “It is an obvious expansion of the war by Russia — and this is exactly how they act. Small steps at first, and eventually big losses.”
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.
Jin Yu Young reports on South Korea, the Asia Pacific region and global breaking news from Seoul.
Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
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