The Pentagon has started withdrawing roughly 5,000 troops from Europe. It has also scrapped a planned armored-brigade rotation to Poland, according to The Washington Post.

The cuts mark the largest revision of U.S. military footprint in Europe since the Cold War ended, La Voce di New York reported Wednesday. The Pentagon's review also covers reductions to fighter jets, strategic bombers, destroyers, submarines and armed drones based on the continent, the outlet reported.

President Donald Trump had floated cutting U.S. troop levels in Europe by as much as a third, CNN reported earlier this month. Some Republican lawmakers have pushed back specifically against the eastern European cuts, Yahoo News reported.

Bucharest acts without Washington

Romanian F-16 jets shot down three suspected Russian drones on three consecutive days last week, Friday through Sunday, The Washington Post reported. One was downed over Buzău county, roughly 114 kilometers from Bucharest.

President Nicușor Dan called the airspace violations "inadmissible and intolerable," according to the Washington Post. A fourth drone crossed into Romanian airspace on Monday. Romania's foreign ministry summoned Russia's ambassador and expelled a Russian diplomat, the newspaper reported.

Romania acted under a law its parliament passed in February 2025, signed by then-acting President Ilie Bolojan, authorizing the armed forces to shoot down Russian drones on their own authority, Fox News reported. The law requires troops to identify a drone, attempt contact and fire warning shots before destroying it.

They know we passed this law, and in the last two months they have avoided crossing into our airspace.

Romanian defense official, quoted by Fox News

Crucially, the law lets Bucharest respond nationally instead of invoking NATO's Article 5 collective-defense clause, which could draw the full alliance into a confrontation with Russia, Fox News reported. Romania is deciding, on its own, when and how to fire — not waiting on a NATO or U.S. sign-off.

Russia's embassy in Bucharest said the shoot-downs would "not go unanswered" and warned that Romanian cross-border action would amount to "Romania's direct involvement in combat operations on Ukrainian territory," Newsweek reported. The embassy denied Russia was deliberately targeting Romania.

HYPOTHESIS: Romania's decision to handle repeated Russian incursions under a national law, rather than through NATO's collective mechanisms, signals eastern European states are starting to build unilateral response capacity as U.S. commitment recedes. Supporting: the Pentagon drawdown and Trump's public musings about deeper cuts coincide with a Romanian law explicitly built to avoid triggering Article 5. Against: Romania's law predates the current drawdown by more than a year, and NATO aircraft still patrol the alliance's eastern flank alongside Romanian jets — this may reflect prudent national defense planning rather than a strategic pivot away from the alliance.

The two developments are not formally linked in either country's public statements. But they land in the same week, on the same eastern flank, and point the same direction: less assumption that Washington moves first.

What to watch

  • Whether the Pentagon's force-posture review, still underway, extends further cuts to Poland, Romania or the Baltic states.
  • Whether other eastern-flank NATO members follow Romania in passing national laws to authorize unilateral shoot-downs.
  • Whether Russia escalates beyond warnings after Romania's ambassador summons and diplomat expulsion.
  • Whether Congress succeeds in blocking or slowing the Pentagon's European drawdown.