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What the mid-December 2023 incidents showed
Summary
A drone in Romania, a missile strike on Kyiv and fighting in Kherson Raion marked the days around 19 December 2023.
What was the security picture on 19 December 2023? Reports from the preceding days pointed to pressure on several fronts, including one that reached a NATO member's territory.
On 13 December 2023, a Russian ballistic missile attack in Kyiv injured more than 50 people. It was listed among Russian strikes against infrastructure.
On 14 December 2023, Romania said a Russian drone had crashed on its territory, leaving a crater in Grindu, in Tulcea county, near the Ukrainian border. Romanian Air Force F-16s and German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons flew joint patrols in response to the violation of NATO airspace. The response showed allied aircraft working together after the incident.
On 16 December 2023, Russia said two civilians were killed and two others injured in a Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian-occupied village of Nova Maiachka in Kherson Raion, part of the southern Ukraine campaign.
What linked these events
The three reports came from different places: the Ukrainian capital, the Romanian border area and occupied Kherson Raion. Together they show a war in which strikes on infrastructure, cross-border drone incidents and exchanges of fire in the south were all under way in the same days. The Romanian case stood apart because it prompted a joint NATO air response.
