Romania has not confirmed Russian missile entered its airspace

Romania has said that its air defence did not record the entry of a Russian missile into its airspace during the large-scale attack on Ukraine on the night of 24-25 December.

According to Digi24, Romanian Defence Ministry spokesman Constantin Spinu said Ukraine informed Romania about a Russian missile flying through the airspace of Moldova at about 07:30, after which it flew near the city of Darabani "for about two minutes".

"According to the monitoring data of Romanian air surveillance systems and the data provided by NATO assets that complement the monitoring, there was no confirmation of a crossing of Romanian airspace in the Romanian area of responsibility," the spokesman continued.

He stressed that the competent agencies of the Romanian Ministry of Defence "will continue to investigate this situation in order to establish the circumstances".

Ukraine’s Air Force reported at 07:24 on 25 December that a cruise missile was flying "in the direction of Chernivtsi from the territory of Moldova".

Monitoring outlets noted that the Russian missile flew 140 kilometres across the territory of Moldova and Romania, entering the airspace from the town of Yampil in Vinnytsia Oblast (near the Moldovan border) and then flying back into Ukraine near the town of Darabani (a Romanian town near the border with Moldova).

The Moldovan side has not yet commented on these reports.

On 25 December, Russia launched another missile attack on Ukraine. Explosions were reported in Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, as well as in Poltava and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia struck Ukraine with more than 70 missiles and 100 drones, and Ukrainian air defence managed to shoot down "over 50 missiles and a significant number of the drones".