Zelensky says Russia launched drones into Moldova twice while his presidential plane was there. A source in his office called a reported near-collision ‘an exaggeration.’
Source: CBS News
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian drones had recently entered Moldovan airspace twice while his presidential plane was in the country. He spoke about the incidents in an interview with CBS News.
“My presidential plane was in Moldova, and so they attacked Moldova. They used Moldovan airspace. Maybe they didn’t want to attack me personally… […] We didn’t tell the media about this, but when we were returning home through Chișinău again, they did the same thing,” Zelensky said.
Asked whether Moscow was trying to intimidate him this way, the Ukrainian president said yes.
Zelensky spoke about the incidents in Moldova when asked to comment on a Russian drone strike on one train near a second, specially arranged train carrying European diplomats and officials from Ukraine to Poland.
Zelensky said he believed Russia knew that “Europeans, Americans, big delegations” were aboard the special train.
“[A]nd they attacked. They did it often in Moldova and Romania, and sometimes in Poland. So I mean this is… it’s a process. It’s a process. They show the power, and you understand that when they show this power — absolutely not a decayed power — nobody answered them.” Zelensky said.
On September 9, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Zelensky’s plane had narrowly avoided colliding with a drone as it departed Moldova for Oslo. The Moldovan government later said the country had closed its airspace after detecting a drone, delaying the Ukrainian president’s departure from Chișinău. Moldova Liberă reported that authorities received an alert about a drone in the country’s airspace at 4:30 p.m. After 5:20 p.m., they learned that the drone had exploded near the village of Mihăilenii Vechi in Rîșcani District, about 160 kilometers from Chișinău International Airport. Authorities then lifted the restrictions, and Zelensky’s plane departed.
A source in the Ukrainian president’s office told AFP that the Norwegian prime minister’s account of Zelensky’s plane nearly colliding with the drone was “an exaggeration.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the threat to Zelensky’s plane had been “illusory” and that “the Ukrainians themselves acknowledged as much.”
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