Romania’s National Defence Minister Angel Tilvar declared for Agerpres that at the Feb 14 – 15 meeting of NATO Defence Ministers, he brought up the recent incident with the Russian missile that grazed Romania’s border on February 10 and which Ukraine initially announced as an infringement of Romania’s airspace.

Minister Tilvar said that he brought up the subject because on the one hand he considered that „such an incident shows how bad it is to have conflict, aggression situations in our region, and this is a relevant example, and on the other hand I was happy to see (…) that such a situation concerns all our allies and that they all have similar positions regarding such incidents.”

„I confirm that the target, because that’s what it is called in official terms, did not enter Romania’s territory and the statement we made right from the beginning was also confirmed by the U.S. Department of State in the evening of the same day. So our assessments, that also took into account our communication with allies, were correct. But we can understand the concerns of a state under attack that has lost territories and is under permanent high alert,” Angel Tilvar said about the incident last Friday.

The Defence Ministry reported at the time that „the Romanian Air Force aerial surveillance system detected on Friday, February 10, an airborne target launched from the Black Sea from a ship of the Russian Federation, near the Crimean Peninsula, most likely a cruise missile which crossed the airspace of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova and re-entered the Ukrainian airspace without intersecting at any time Romania’s airspace”.

The Ministry also specified that the closest point of the target’s trajectory to Romania’s airspace was approximately 35 kilometers northeast of the border.

Agerpres