The F-16 aircraft from the Fetești Air Base, transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries, did not carry out “test flights in the direction of Odessa – Snake Island region”, said defenceromania.ro, referring to Telegram falsehoods that NATO infrastructure will be used by aircraft transferred to Ukraine to hit Russia, IPN reports.

Equally false is the so-called “official information” included in the same message regarding the F-16 aircraft transferred to the 86th Borcea Air Base. The equipment received from the Kingdom of the Netherlands is used not for the execution of combat missions, but for the training of Romanian not Ukrainian military pilots, said the quoted source.

The propaganda on Telegram is accompanied by an image (“stop-false” marking applied by the editorial staff), also with false and provocative messages: the neighboring country is qualified as “the so-called Ukraine”, and arrows are thrown over the contour of the map of the Republic of Moldova suggesting the penetration of the airspace within military actions that in fact do not exist.

This is not the first time that false information regarding the F-16 aircraft of the Romanian Air Force was published on Russian communication channels. A false message similar to the one that was recently circulated on Russian disinformation channels was debunked in January 2024 on the platform InfoRadar.

Since the start of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, Romania, as a member of the North Atlantic Alliance, has acted by implementing measures to strengthen the defense and deterrence posture, which is strictly defensive in nature and proportionate to the level of potential threats to regional security, in strict compliance with the norms of international law.

In fact, after the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Russian Federation, starting with 2014, the aircraft of the Romanian Air Force act within Air Policing and Enhanced Air Policing missions, together with combat aircraft of the partners, under NATO command.

The Romanian aircraft participating in Enhanced Air Policing missions perform these missions exclusively in the airspace of Romania, in order to strengthen the reaction capacity and prevent possible hostile actions.