Russia’s latest drone incursion into Moldova and NATO airspace comes as Moscow increasingly deploys jet-powered attack drones, blurring the line between traditional UAVs and low-cost cruise missiles and making them much harder to intercept.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane was preparing to leave Chișinău for Oslo on Tuesday afternoon when Moldova’s military detected an unmanned aerial vehicle in the country’s airspace.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
What initially appeared to be another Russian drone incursion took on greater significance the following day, when Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre revealed that Zelenskyy’s plane had almost been hit by a drone.
“His flight was almost hit by a drone when it was taking off from Moldova. That is the reality he lives in,” Støre told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
The timeline shows how the events unfolded.
Moldovan military first detected an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle at 4:20 pm CEST.
By 4:37 pm, Romania’s Defence Ministry said the drone crossed into Romanian — and therefore NATO — airspace.
Two minutes later two Spanish F-18 fighter jets deployed as part of NATO’s enhanced Air Policing mission took off to monitor it.
The jets did not intercept the drone. Romanian radar continued to track it until 5:02 pm, when contact was lost.
Five minutes later at 5:07 pm the drone was detected again over Moldova, where it later crashed about 25 km east of the Romanian border.
According to monitoring channels, Zelenskyy’s plane took off from Chișinău around 5:57 pm.
For much of Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine that began in early 2022, Zelenskyy has travelled abroad primarily through Poland, with Rzeszów serving as a regular departure point.
In recent months, however, his presidential aircraft has also begun using Chișinău more frequently for foreign trips.
What type of drone was it?
The exact model of the drone involved in Moldova and Romania has not been officially established.
Ukrainian open-source monitoring channels identified it as a Geran-4, one of Russia’s newer jet-powered attack drones.
The Geran-4 and Geran-5 are among the newest additions to Russia’s expanding Geran family, although they differ significantly in design and capabilities.
The Geran-4 has a wingspan of about three metres and is roughly 3.5 metres long. Its maximum take-off weight is around 450 kilograms.
According to Ukrainian military intelligence, the Geran-4 can reach speeds of up to 500 km/h and carry a warhead weighing between 50 and 90 kilograms.
Russia has recently stepped up its use of jet-powered drones, including in complex barrages alongside ballistic and cruise missiles designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences.
Their speed makes them much harder to intercept than conventional Shahed-type drones, particularly for the mobile fire groups and other relatively inexpensive systems Ukraine has relied on to counter slower-moving UAVs.
Ukraine is instead forced to use scarce and considerably more expensive air-defence missiles against the faster threats, putting additional pressure on already limited interceptor stocks.
Several Ukrainian companies have reportedly begun testing missiles specifically designed to shoot down the new jet-powered Geran models.