A NATO member state was forced to ground two F-16 fighter jets overnight and put its air defense systems on firing status as Russia once again wreaked havoc on Ukraine. Russian attacks across Ukraine in the past 24 hours include new attacks on ports in the Odessa region on the Danube River – which is just half a mile from Romania.
Emergency alerts were sent to northern parts of Tulsia just after 3.45am local time on Tuesday, and ended about an hour later. Tulcea is directly across the border from the Ukrainian port of Izmail, which is bordered by the Danube River. The country’s Ministry of National Defense said: “Two F-16 aircraft of the Romanian Air Force from the Air Police Combat Service took off from the 86th Air Base in Fetesti, and air defense systems were put into firing positions.
“Within a few hours, another group of drones was detected moving towards Izmail (Ukraine), and a new RO-Alert message was sent at 5:08 am.”
The government confirmed that no Russian drones violated Romanian airspace.
The Governor of Odessa confirmed that two buses, a service station, six houses and seven cars, as well as a Liberian-flagged ship were affected.
Earlier, five people were killed and 27 injured in Dnipro in Russian attacks. Heartbreaking scenes showed victims of the blast on the street of a Ukrainian city with shrapnel wounds, lacerations and fractures.
An emergency worker assisting a 54-year-old civilian woman says: “Just a normal civilian woman, nothing military… Film it, film it. Her leg is torn.”
The woman said: “It’s been torn apart… I can’t feel my legs.” Three more were injured in subsequent attacks on Dnipro.
Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, was hit by six aerial bombs on the Pechenehy Dam in the Kharkiv region.
