| Date | 23 Oct 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Strike |
| Location |
Chiștelnița, Telenești District, Moldova
47.57, 28.66 (approximate) |
Moldova's Ministry of Defence said the National Army's Air Operations Centre tracked an unmanned aerial vehicle entering national airspace at 13:59 on 23 October 2026, during massive Russian attacks on Ukraine, from the direction of Verhnia Slobidka, in Ukraine's Vinnytsia region, towards Frunzeuca, in Camenca district. It vanished from monitoring near Pepeni at 14:10, reappeared briefly and was lost near Meșeni at 14:12. Police said a drone fell about 100 metres from a house in Chiștelnița, Telenești district, with no casualties. President Maia Sandu said it was a Russian Geran attack drone, and the foreign ministry declared a Russian embassy employee persona non grata. The Ministry of Defence said on 24 October that a joint army and interior ministry working group had identified it as a Geran-4, and that its warhead was defused and destroyed on site.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct 2026 | Strike | Drone crashes and explodes near Codrenii Noi after four overnight crossings of Moldova |
| 17 Oct 2026 | Interception | Two jet-powered Geran drones shot down by Romanian F-16s over territorial waters off Sulina |
| 18 Oct 2026 | Strike | Drone, most likely Ukrainian, strays into northern Lithuania and explodes near Juodžionys |
| 18 Oct 2026 | Strike | Foreign drone crashes in a forest in Liepna parish near the Russian border and is found six days later |
Moldova's defense ministry counted 19 airspace violations in October, and GlobalMilitary.net's incident log, which records only established incursions, holds 31 Moldovan entries for 2026 against Romania's 32, most of them since August.
GlobalMilitary.net's 2026 inventory snapshot shows nine NATO members — Iceland, Luxembourg, the three Baltic states, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Slovenia — hold no fixed-wing fighters, attack aircraft or bombers and depend on Allied air policing.
GlobalMilitary.net's incident log counts 45 established violations of European airspace between January 1 and August 16, 2026, against 31 for the whole of 2025 - and almost all of the growth sits in incidents that ended with a shootdown or an explosion on the ground.
An Italian Eurofighter on NATO Baltic Air Policing duty destroyed an unidentified drone over eastern Latvia before dawn on 14 August, the second time the alliance's quick-reaction force has shot one down over the country this year.