Romania said it deployed two F-16 jet fighters to destroy a Russia-launched explosive marine drone that threatened hundreds of lives near one of its gas platforms.

Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta said the naval drone was spotted a few hundred meters away from the Neptun Deep platform, which sits 80 miles east of the Romanian Black Sea city of Constanta.

The decision was taken, in consultation with NATO, to destroy the drone in order to protect the lives of the several hundred people who were working on the platform and to secure the infrastructure, Miruta said in a Facebook post.

He added that the Ukrainians had informed Romania the drone wasn't theirs.

Romanian President Nicusor Dan pointed the finger at Moscow.

"I strongly condemn the intensification of these types of irresponsible incidents on the part of the Russian Federation. We remain vigilant alongside NATO allies to defend ourselves and repel such challenges," he wrote in a post on X.

The Kremlin didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

In June, a Ukrainian naval drone exploded at the Romanian port of Constanta after drifting to Romania's coast. After that incident, Romania's government requested Ukraine ensure its drones are programmed to self-destruct if they come near Romanian waters.

The eastern frontier of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Romania is a member, has been plagued by near daily drone incursions this summer, raising fears that the war between Ukraine and Russia is increasingly bleeding into the alliance's territory.

NATO jets have scrambled to shoot down the aerial drones, including those that have breached its airspace as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare.

Russia has deployed spoofing and jamming networks across its western military district to disrupt Ukrainian long-range strike drones, leading to numerous incidents in recent months of Ukrainian drones inadvertently crossing into the airspace of neighboring NATO states.

NATO-member engagement with a sea drone is a rarer event, however, and prompted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday to say that Europe was facing "an escalating campaign of threats."

"This is hybrid warfare," she said in a post on X.

Russia has been systematically using drones to probe air defenses in Europe, looking for weaknesses to exploit, Germany's top military officer told The Wall Street Journal recently, amid what he called an intensifying gray-zone campaign aimed at destabilizing the continent's governments and institutions.

Neptun Deep is set to become the largest gas producer in Romania, entrenching the country's place as the European Union's leading producer of the fuel and crucial to the continent's energy security.

The incident close by on Thursday underscores the security threat to the Black Sea, a hub for global grain trade and Ukraine's lifeline to the world economy. Attacks by Russia and more recently Ukraine have set ships and port infrastructure ablaze at both ends of the sea, an ominous sign for the rest of the world's food supplies.

Last week, NATO scrambled four jet fighters to shoot down a foreign drone that entered Latvia's airspace early Friday, in what that country's ministry of defense said was the result of Russian electromagnetic warfare.

NATO jets earlier this month also pursued drones that had entered Romanian airspace near the Ukrainian border, the alliance said, without specifying the origin of the unmanned vehicles.

Such incursions add to anxiety among NATO members about the potential for Russia to test the alliance's resolve with direct or indirect aerial intrusions.

A NATO official said that it was aware of the incident Thursday and added that the fact the maritime drone was destroyed by an F-16 "demonstrated continued readiness to respond to any potential threat."

Neptun Deep is Romania's first deep offshore project, with recoverable volumes of approximately 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas, equivalent to 30 times the current annual domestic demand, according to OMV Petrom, one of the co-owners of the project. Located in shallow waters, the site is slated to start producing gas from next year.

European energy prices have shot higher because of the Iran war. The gas project would strengthen Europe's energy supplies, which have been strained since Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.