NATO Vows to Defend ‘Every Inch’ of Territory After Russian Suicide Drone Enters Airspace and Hits Apartment Block

NATO said it was “ready to defend every inch of Allied territory” after a Russian Shahed-type suicide attack drone entered European Union airspace and hit an apartment block in Romania, injuring two people.

Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets overnight to intercept a Russian drone entering its airspace but had just four minutes between detecting the strike and it crashing into the side of an apartment building in the south-eastern town of Galati, a spokesman said. Situated on the River Danube on the Romanian border where it meets the borders of Moldova and Ukraine in a three-way split, the region is a frequent target for Russian strikes given the river’s importance to the Ukrainian economy.

Previous Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa and other cities up the Danube have come so close to the Romanian frontier that Romanian troops have observed drones landing on targets