At 16:20 EEST (13:20 UTC) on Tuesday, 8 September 2026, Moldova's military detected a drone entering national airspace from the direction of Ukraine. The drone crossed Moldovan territory and, at 16:47 EEST, Romania's Ministry of National Defence picked it up on radar 18 km north of the town of Roman. Romanian authorities sent RO-Alert warnings to residents of Botoșani, Iași, Neamț, Vaslui, and Suceava counties, telling them to shelter in basements in case of falling debris, and Iași International Airport suspended flights.
Two Spanish F-18s, part of NATO's air-policing mission in Romania, were scrambled but did not engage. The drone re-crossed into Moldova, and at 17:26 EEST (14:26 UTC), Moldovan police were notified it had crashed near the village of Mihăileni Vechi, Rîșcani District. The impact started four fires in a sunflower field.
Photo: Poliția Republicii Moldova, via Veridica.md. Police and specialists at the impact crater and drone wreckage near Mihăileni Vechi, 8 September 2026.
The drone carried explosives and metal shrapnel
Moldovan police said fragments recovered from the impact site belonged to a turbojet-powered aircraft consistent with a Shahed/"Geran"-type design, fitted with metal-ball shrapnel intended to increase lethality; explosive-ordnance specialists were still working to determine the exact type and mass of the charge. No casualties were reported. The crash site sits outside the village, in open farmland.
The drone re-entered Romanian airspace before turning back
Moldova's defence ministry tracked the object from 16:20 EEST, when it entered from the direction of Ukraine, until 16:37 EEST, when it left Moldovan airspace near Zagarancea, Ungheni District, on a course toward Golăiești, Iași County, Romania. Romanian radar lost contact with the drone shortly after 17:00 EEST as it re-crossed back toward Moldova. This is the second confirmed Moldova-Romania cross-border drone event in under a month: on 16 August, a separate drone that crossed from Moldova into Galați County was shot down by Spanish F-18s 17 minutes after detection - a NATO engagement, unlike the 8 September drone, which crashed on its own after Romanian jets did not fire.
Wind conditions over Rîșcani District
At 13:00 UTC on 8 September, the 500 m layer over the crash site showed S wind at 19.4 km/h, a push to the north. At 2,000 m the wind shifted to W at 7.5 km/h, a push east; at 3,000 m WNW at 15.8 km/h, a push toward the ESE.
This reconstruction draws on reporting by the Kyiv Independent, Digi24, Veridica.md, and Cotidianul.md, and on AirVeto's wind-model data for the 13:20-14:26 UTC window on 8 September 2026. How the model is built and where it is reliable is on the methodology page. A full archive of drone and airspace incidents across the EU's eastern border is at the incident archive.