A combat drone exploded near a village on Moldova's border with Ukraine on 9 August, sparking a grass fire but hurting no one, Moldovan police said. Investigators recovered fragments and will examine them to establish the drone's type and origin. It was one of two blasts the war pushed across Europe's borders in two days, with Bulgaria fielding a separate drone explosion and summoning Ukraine's ambassador.

A drone down in a Moldovan field

The blast rang out around 13:20 near Crocmaz, in Moldova's Ștefan Vodă district in the southeast, and set dry grass alight, NewsMaker reported. The village lies on the Dniester, upstream of Ukraine's Dniester estuary.

Firefighters and patrols confirmed no civilians were hurt and no homes were damaged. Police found fragments that they preliminarily identified as parts of a combat drone. Those pieces will undergo a ballistic-technical examination to determine the drone's exact type, its affiliation, and how it fell. Crocmaz sits right on the Ukrainian border. The district council posted photos of the object and told residents to avoid the cordoned area and report any fragments to the 112 line.

The blast came amid an assault on Odesa

The drone fell hours after Russia hit Odesa with missiles and drones overnight on 9 August. Much of Moldova's eastern border runs along Odesa Oblast, so wreckage from the war often drifts across. Russian drones have crashed on Moldovan soil during such attacks before. Whether this one was Russian or something else is for the examination to show.

A parallel case in Bulgaria

Also today, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine's ambassador, Olesia Ilashchuk, over a drone that exploded on 8 August near the Romanian border, by a Trans-Balkan gas pipeline compressor station, Bulgarian National Television reported. Its defense bloc said the drone was likely a Ukrainian decoy, with no sign it was launched on purpose. 

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Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk said on June 28 that Ukraine's parliament is preparing a draft bill to hold elections following the end of the martial law period enacted as a result of the war.

"We are working on this draft law, because for the next elections, a new special draft law is needed that will regulate the so-called post-war elections," Stefanchuk said on Ukraine's marathon TV broadcast.

"We are preparing various basic scenarios so that people can exercise their fundamental constitutional right to vote. And this must take place in Ukraine. And I believe we will be able to find the right legislative compromise," he added.

The reason for separate legislation on a post-war election, Stefanchuk previously said, was due to the fact that Ukraine's Constitution does not not provide clarity on the details of holding elections following the end of a martial law period.

No details on the bill or timeline for implementation were provided.

Russia's full-scale invasion and the subsequent declaration of martial law in Ukraine meant elections have been impossible to hold, and President Volodymyr Zelensky's term has been extended, something constitutional lawyers say is allowed under Ukrainian law.

Despite criticism, Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed a resolution on Feb. 25 to hold elections after "a comprehensive, just, and sustainable peace is secured" in the country.

While polling shows a vast majority of Ukrainian citizens do not support holding elections before a full peace deal, the lack of elections has stirred some controversy with Ukraine's allies.

At the start of his second term in office, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ukraine to hold elections — something that Ukraine has thus far refused to do citing the difficulties of holding elections amid active warfare, as well as security implications.

Zelensky has previously said he is willing to step down in exchange for a peace agreement.

Russian propaganda has widely used the issue of elections in Ukraine to discredit the Ukrainian leadership. Mocow has repeatedly claimed that Zelensky is no longer a legitimate president, as his first term was originally meant to end on May 20, 2024.

Russia has amassed 111,000 troops near Pokrovsk, Syrskyi says

Pokrovsk remains the “hottest spot” along the front line but “the situation is under control” and Russia has not crossed the administrative border from Donetsk to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said.

The Kyiv IndependentAbbey Fenbert