Romania’s ministry of national defence said on Sunday that a Spanish Air and Space Force F-18 fighter jet shot down a drone that had entered Romanian airspace.

The drone’s entry into the Nato member’s airspace was detected by surveillance systems at 4.44am, the ministry said, about 24km (14.9 miles) north of the eastern city of Galati near the border with neighboring Moldova. Moldova is a landlocked country between Ukraine and Romania.

A Spanish F-18 aircraft that was performing air policing duties “made radar contact with the target and received engagement approval,” the ministry said. “The drone was safely shot down by the F-18 aircraft at 05.01.”

The ministry later said that drone debris was also reported in the Black Sea around 10am on Sunday, about 1.5km (0.9 miles) from the coastal city of Constanta.

Officials did not specify the drone’s origin.

The incident comes weeks after Romanian pilots shot down three drones over three days as Russia intensified attacks against Ukraine near the border.

Ukraine launched hundreds of drones across Russia on Sunday, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight. Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself.

An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, local governor Andrey Vorobyov said.

He also confirmed that a Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk.

A drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local governor Yury Slyusar said.

The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire.

We’ve heard earlier from Russia’s Defence Ministry which said on Sunday that its forces have taken the village of Pershomarivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region

The ministry said that Moscow’s forces have also sezied Kudiivka in the northeastern Kharkiv region, state news agency TASS reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reaffirmed deepening ties with Russia in a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin on the anniversary of Pyongyang’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

Earlier, Putin said the bond between Moscow and Pyongyang was forged as Soviet soldiers “fought against Japan”, and that cooperation would continue “in all the sectors”.

Kim expressed hope for the future of the ties between the two countries that had “carried forward the ⁠history of common struggle for justice and precious traditions of ​friendship”, KNCA reported.

North Korea’s ties with Russia have deepened after Pyongyang began deploying troops and weapons to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Russia conveyed its concern to the US and Turkey over their upcoming transfer of arms to Ukraine, saying the shipment could cause “serious damage” to relations with the two countries.

Delivering the weapons would cause “serious damage to our bilateral relations with Washington and Ankara”, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

“Attempts to use peace-promoting rhetoric while simultaneously supplying weapons to (Ukraine) inevitably erode mutual trust, especially against the backdrop of repeated assurances by Turkish officials that Turkey is avoiding ‘lethal’ deliveries to Kyiv.”

For a few hours last week, the volcanic island of Iturup became the stage for a confrontation that had been decades in the making.

Vladimir Putin, accompanied by the governor of the Sakhalin region, toured a fish-processing complex, a hospital and a school on the island. For Russia, it was a routine presidential visit to a remote territory. For neighbouring Japan, its symbolism was hard to miss.

Japan, after all, claims the island, which it calls Etorofu, as part of its “Northern Territories”.

Prime minister Sanae Takaichi described Putin’s visit to the island as “absolutely unacceptable” while foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi summoned Russia’s ambassador to protest.

Ukraine said yesterday that its forces struck Russia’s Savasleyka airbase, which houses MiG-31K fighter jets that Moscow uses to launch ballistic missiles against Kyiv.

Ukraine also carried out a missile strike against a key Russian space rocket centre in Samara city which it claimed deploys satellite communications systems for the battlefield.

The rocket centre has been instrumental in developing Soyuz-type launch vehicles, including the Soyuz-2.1b three-stage carrier rocket, Kyiv claimed.

Ukrainian defence manufacturer Fire Point confirmed yesterday that Kyiv used FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles to strike the Progress Space Rocket Centre.

The attacks come amid Kyiv’s widely reported anti-ballistic missile interceptor shortage.

Romania shot down a drone illegally entering its airspace today, marking the fourth time the eastern European country has neutralised an uncrewed aircraft breaching its borders.

Romania’s defence ministry did not share details on the origin of the drone, but said its radars detected it entering the country from ‌neighbouring Moldova,

The drone was shot down by a Spanish F-18 fighter jet pilot on a NATO air policing mission.

The jet “made radar contact with the target and received permission to engage it,” the defence ministry said, adding that the unmanned vehicle was shot down at 5.01am local time.

In an indication of strengthening military ties between the UK and Kyiv, Ukrainian army sources told The Times that drones made by two British companies have been used in the past six months to attack targets including oil refineries in Volgograd and near Moscow and logistics hubs.

The intensifying drone attacks, which have also targeted transport infrastructure and sites belonging to Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries, have been crucial in inflicting heavy damage on Moscow’s economy.