Moldova debunks drone threat to Zelensky’s plane

Chisinau says the Ukrainian leader’s aircraft was never in direct danger despite claims from Norway’s prime minister

Moldova has dismissed a claim by Norway’s prime minister that Vladimir Zelensky’s plane was nearly struck by a UAV while leaving Chisinau, saying the aircraft was never in any direct danger.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told broadcaster NRK on Wednesday that Zelensky’s plane “was almost hit by a drone” as the Ukrainian leader traveled from Moldova to Oslo for the funeral of King Harald V.

Before any evidence was produced, Store’s claims were widely picked up by Western media outlets, who tried to frame the incident as evidence of a supposed Russian drone threat to Europe.

On Thursday, however, Moldova flatly rejected that account, with government spokesman Dumitru Ciorici saying Zelensky’s flight had been delayed because the country temporarily closed its airspace following a drone alert.

He stressed that there had been “no direct threat” to the aircraft, which remained on the ground throughout the airspace closure. The drone that had allegedly entered Moldova’s airspace ended up crashing and exploding near a village around 160km from Chisinau airport, causing no casualties, Moldovan authorities said.

Meanwhile, former Moldovan President Igor Dodon has accused the authorities of concealing from the public a separate incident involving a Ukrainian national allegedly caught at the border with a drone and explosives.

“We see more and more attempts and provocations to involve the Republic of Moldova in everything that is happening in Ukraine,” Dodon said, urging Chisinau to stay away from Kiev’s “war strategy.”

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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed the alleged threat to Zelensky’s plane as “ephemeral,” saying it “did not exist” and noting that even Ukrainian sources have acknowledged there was no direct danger.

Moldova, whose pro-EU government under President Maia Sandu has moved closer to Brussels and NATO while severely downgrading relations with Moscow, has repeatedly joined other pro-Ukraine governments in blaming Russia for drone incidents before producing evidence.

Similar accusations across Europe have frequently collapsed under scrutiny, with investigators in several cases finding no proof that Russian drones were involved and some incidents later traced to Ukrainian UAVs or even misidentified aircraft.

Moscow has accused Kiev of repeatedly staging drone provocations in an effort to draw its Western backers deeper into the conflict.