Moldova closed its airspace on the afternoon of 8 September and delayed the plane carrying Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Norway after a Russian drone crossed into the country, its government said in a statement to Reuters. The aircraft was cleared for takeoff once officials established that it had come down on Moldovan territory. Norway's prime minister described the episode as a near-miss, and neither government has said how close the drone came.

Russia runs three things at once along the EU's eastern frontier—mass drone attacks on Ukraine, drones crossing into Moldovan and Romanian airspace almost weekly, and strikes on the border checkpoints tying the three countries together—and states without interceptors can answer only by closing their skies.

What happened, and when

Moldova's National Army detected a Shahed-type drone entering from Ukraine at 16:20, the country's Defense Ministry reported. It flew toward Bender, a city in the Russian-backed breakaway region of Transnistria, then turned toward the capital, Chișinău, by 16:32. At 16:37, it left the country over western Moldova and headed into eastern Romania, across the Prut river border.

Controllers restricted the airspace over central Moldova at 16:30. The same drone came back from the Romanian side, crossed the north of the country, and came down outside a village in the northwest, near the Romanian border, setting dry vegetation alight, according to the log. Nobody was hurt, and the airspace reopened at 17:39, more than an hour after it closed. The BBC's Ukrainian service placed the crash near a different northern village, without naming a source, so the exact spot is unsettled.

The violation fell in the window when Zelenskyy's aircraft was preparing to take off, Militarnyi reported, citing the ministry. The civilian airport he was leaving from suspended operations and the border service closed the nearby crossings, the outlet added. Three departures and four arrivals were delayed in all, Reuters said.

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How the plane and the drone crossed paths

Zelenskyy flies an Airbus A319 corporate jet, and the threat to it probably came from a jet-powered Geran drone that crossed Romanian and then Moldovan airspace at around 17:00 that day, Militarnyi wrote, publishing the drone's track from the monitoring channel Oko Hora. That fits the return leg in the army's log, though no authority has tied a specific aircraft to the delay.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told the broadcaster NRK the plane was almost hit as it prepared to leave, without naming his source. His office later described a danger recorded in Moldovan airspace that forced the delay. Norway's Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Zelenskyy recounted the details himself at a closed meeting in Oslo.

Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska attended the farewell ceremony for King Harald V, who died on 28 August. Around it, the president worked on air defense, meeting Støre and then executives of defense companies from partner countries about the FREYJA anti-ballistic missile program, which Norway's government casts as a cheaper alternative to the Patriot.

The next night, the border crossing

Overnight on 9 September, Russian drones struck the Starokozache crossing on Ukraine's border with Moldova, killing two people and injuring three. The dead were Ukrainians, and a Moldovan citizen was among the injured, Moldova's Foreign Ministry told the broadcaster TV8. Border guards reopened the crossing that afternoon.

Russia claimed it had struck the crossing because it was used for military logistics. Moldova's Foreign Ministry rejected that outright, saying no weapons move through its territory, and that the people crossing there are families, children with their mothers, and the elderly. It is one of the working crossings on the Odesa Oblast stretch of the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, where the heaviest traffic runs through Palanca and Giurgiulești.

Moldova's President Maia Sandu condemned both the strike and the Geran-type drone that had forced her country to close its airspace the day before, and said the events show Ukraine needs more air defense.

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The pattern, and Moldova's empty sky

Russia has hit at least five checkpoints on Ukraine's western borders since late August, four of them facing Moldova and one facing Romania, and the drone that struck the Kotlovyna crossing on 20 August flew in through Moldovan airspace. Euromaidan Press has covered part of that campaign, including burned food cargo near the Giurgiulești crossing in August. The State Border Guard Service has called such strikes an act of terrorism, because people are present at the crossings when they are hit.

In the air, Moldova can do little. It is still buying its first serious air defenses, so it restricts airspace and waits while Romania scrambles jets against the drones that reach its side. It logged three airspace breaches in nine days in August, and more than 100 drones were detected near Romania in four days that month.