A drone without payload was found on Tuesday in a locality in Vaslui County, Defence Minister Ionut Mosteanu said during a visit to the 57th Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base.

According to him, the drone fell in the locality of Puiesti.

'There has been a new incursion by a Russian drone, a new provocation by Russia against Romania, a drone that the Romanian Army and the German Eurofighters tried to bring down (...). I will interrupt this activity here today and return to Bucharest. General Gheorghita Vlad is there, he did not come and we are coordinating. A drone was found somewhere in Vaslui County, a drone without a payload. It is probably the same drone the aircraft attempted to bring down. The aircraft were scrambled and had permission to engage. I will speak with the German pilots who were on the mission a bit later (...). Twice two Eurofighter aircraft were scrambled from seven o'clock in the morning. Between these two scrambles F-16 aircraft from the Borcea base, the Romanian aircraft, were also launched,' Mosteanu said.

He noted that the aircraft did not fire and that the drone crashed either because it lost control or because it ran out of fuel.

'It could have been destroyed if all the conditions had been met... the pilots needed to see it, to engage it, to lock it on radar and to be able to fire a missile at it. Had these conditions been met it could have been brought down. As we see they did not succeed again. I would have wanted them to bring it down,' the Defence minister said.

Ionut Mosteanu is paying a visit to the 57th Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Constanta on the occasion of the presence there of General Christopher Donahue, Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Cornelia Dumitru; EN - writing by: Adina Panaitescu)