Moldova closed its airspace over a Russian drone as Zelenskyy's jet waited in Chisinau

A Russian drone crossed into Moldova on Tuesday afternoon and stopped a sitting Ukrainian president from leaving on time. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's aircraft was on the ground at Chisinau International Airport, bound for Oslo and the funeral of King Harald V, when Moldova shut its airspace.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told NRK on Wednesday that the plane was almost hit as it was about to take off. "That is the reality he is facing," he said. He did not name a source or a distance.

Chisinau and Kyiv described a narrower event. Government spokesman Dumitru Ciorici said the airspace closed just after 16:30 local time because a jet-propelled Russian drone had entered from the direction of Ukraine. After 17:20, authorities confirmed the drone had come down and exploded about 160 kilometres from the airport. Flight restrictions were then lifted. Zelenskyy's jet left late. A second drone continued into Romanian airspace.

A source in the Ukrainian presidency told AFP the Norwegian wording was exaggerated. The source described an alert caused by a Russian drone in Moldovan and Romanian airspace, not a near-miss on the presidential aircraft.

Why the gap in the accounts matters

Store was hosting Zelenskyy the same week. The two men, with Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, met on air defence and on the Freyja programme to build a European anti-ballistic layer. Zelenskyy posted that the meeting was about dividing work between governments and companies and producing first results. Store told NRK that Ukraine still has holes in its roof.

A claim that the guest's aircraft was almost hit raises the political temperature around those talks. A claim that a drone fell 160 kilometres away describes the routine risk of flying out of a country that shares a long border with a war. Both can be true at different distances. Only one was measured in public, and that measurement came from Moldova, not from Norway.

The Kremlin has not commented. Store had said on Tuesday that the evening agenda would be air defence. On Wednesday morning he asked Zelenskyy how the night had been. The answer, he told NRK, was that it had not been a good night because the Ukrainian president had been on the phone taking reports of missile strikes.

The Oslo stop itself

Zelenskyy arrived Tuesday evening and walked in the funeral procession on Wednesday with Prince William, Japan's Crown Prince Akishino and leaders from more than 20 countries. He left Norway after the service. The drone story followed him out of the cathedral because Store chose to tell it on national radio the same day.

Moldova has had repeated drone and debris incidents since Russia widened its strikes on Ukraine's south and west. Closing airspace is the standard civil response. Holding a foreign head of state's aircraft until the wreckage is located is also standard. What is new is a NATO prime minister describing that hold as a near hit while the host country puts the explosion a two-hour drive from the runway.

The verifiable sequence is short. A Russian drone entered Moldova. Airspace closed. The drone fell far from Chisinau. The Ukrainian aircraft departed late and landed at Gardermoen. Readers can hold Store's phrase and Ciorici's 160 kilometres at the same time. The distance is the fact that can be checked. The adjective is the part that cannot.