A drone alert delayed the departure from Moldova of an aircraft carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Norway after authorities temporarily closed the country's airspace. A Moldovan government spokesperson said the presidential plane received clearance on Tuesday once officials had established that an intruding drone had come down on Moldovan territory.
Moldovan officials said two Russian drones entered the country's airspace during the incident. One landed in a field north of the capital and started a fire, while the second continued into Romanian airspace, extending the security concern across the border of another European state.
The temporary closure affected civilian aviation beyond the presidential flight. Three departing flights and four arrivals were delayed while authorities assessed the drones' movements and kept aircraft on the ground, demonstrating the operational disruption created even when an incursion causes no direct strike on an airport.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere later told public broadcaster NRK that Zelenskiy's plane had almost been hit as it prepared to take off. Stoere did not identify the basis for that information or say how close the drone came, leaving the near-hit assertion less firmly documented than the confirmed closure and delay.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu condemned the airspace intrusions as a serious danger to human life. She also denounced a separate Russian drone attack on a crossing along Moldova's border with Ukraine that killed two people, placing the aviation interruption within a wider pattern of threats near the frontier.
Zelenskiy was traveling to Oslo for the funeral of Norway's King Harald V. He reached Norway, joined other heads of state in the procession behind the king's coffin in central Oslo and departed soon after the ceremony ended, despite the delay at the beginning of the journey.
The episode therefore contains two different evidentiary levels: Moldova confirmed the Russian drone entries, airspace closure and flight delays, while the claim that a drone nearly struck Zelenskiy's aircraft came from the Norwegian leader without disclosed technical details. Both underline the growing exposure of civilian aviation to military activity around Ukraine.
