Norway's PM speaks of a drone near Zelensky's plane. His own office quickly softened it to a threat that delayed the flight

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told the public broadcaster NRK on Wednesday that the plane carrying Volodymyr Zelensky was almost hit by a drone on Tuesday as it was taking off from Moldova. Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg described it more sharply to TV 2: as an attempted attack, which the Ukrainian president himself had informed them about. The government office presented it more mildly that same evening: as a drone threat that delayed the flight, adding that how close the drones got to the plane was, in its view, uncertain. NRK ↗ TV 2 ↗ VG ↗ On Thursday it was added that Russia claimed responsibility for a deliberate strike on the Moldovan border crossing from that same night, and Chișinău rejected its justification as false.

Three Versions from One Government in One Day

Støre described the incident in a single sentence. "His plane was almost hit by a drone when it was about to take off from Moldova. That's the reality he lives in," he told NRK. He received the president on Wednesday morning at the government office, a day after Zelensky arrived in Oslo with his wife Olena Zelenska for the funeral of King Harald V. NRK ↗

Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg used a different word for TV 2. "President Zelensky informed us yesterday that there was an attempted drone attack on his plane. I cannot provide details on this," he said. He called it remarkable that the president was walking openly through the streets of Oslo just a few hours later. TV 2 ↗

The difference between these two sentences is no small matter. Støre's formulation also allows for the possibility that the device approached the plane without intent, while Stoltenberg's speaks of an attempted attack, meaning intent. Stoltenberg named Zelensky himself as the source of the information. Støre did not state the origin of his version, and the Reuters agency pointed out that he also did not say how close the drone got to the plane. Seznam Zprávy ↗

That same evening, a third version emerged, this time from the Prime Minister's own office. State Secretary Bhanuja Rasiah told the newspaper VG that there had been a drone threat over Moldova that delayed Zelensky's flight to Oslo. "It is uncertain how close the drones were to his plane," she added. VG ↗

So the three sentences shift the same event from a near miss through an attempted attack to a threat that caused a delay. There is also a difference in number, as the office speaks of drones in the plural. The Prime Minister's own office thus softens his formulation rather than confirming it. VG ↗

Airspace Closure Affected Seven Planes

Tuesday's flight took place on the day a drone actually violated Moldovan airspace, an event for which Chișinău published a minute-by-minute timeline. The National Army's systems detected the device at 16:20 local time, at 16:30 authorities temporarily closed the airspace over the center of the country, and at 16:37 the drone headed off toward Romania. It then returned and crashed in the north of the country. TV8 ↗

The Moldovan Civil Aviation Authority then stated the impact of the restrictions on operations. Three planes that were already airborne circled over Romania for about fifteen minutes and returned to land in Chișinău, another three remained on the ground, and one landed in Iași, Romania. The authority speaks of seven civilian aircraft but does not name the individual flights, so its announcement cannot be used to confirm or rule out the presence of the government flight. Realitatea ↗

Publicly available flight data do not fill in the picture as clearly as one might expect. Citing FlightAware, the Norwegian outlet Dagbladet reports that the presidential plane departed Chișinău just before 17:00 and landed in Norway around 19:45. Dagbladet ↗

That data alone does not precisely place the incident in time, since Dagbladet does not specify a time zone for it, and in September Moldova is one hour ahead of Norway. But something else matters more. Støre spoke of the moment when the plane was about to take off, not of the takeoff itself, and those are two different moments. Dagbladet ↗ NRK ↗

This is exactly where the clarification from the government office fits in. If the threat delayed the flight, then the incident and the later departure explain each other and are not in conflict. However, it is still not possible to determine from public data whether it was the same drone that Chișinău tracked on Tuesday, since the Moldovan announcement does not name individual flights. VG ↗ Realitatea ↗

Read also: A Drone Triggered Alerts in Five Romanian Counties. People Were Urged to Take Shelter in Basements, and the Device Then Returned Over Moldova

Why Zelenskyy was flying out of Moldova at all

Ukrainian airspace has been closed to civilian traffic since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, so the president flies abroad from foreign airports. For years he mainly used the Polish airport of Rzeszów-Jasionka, through which Western military aid also flows. In June 2026 that changed. European Pravda, citing FlightAware, reported at the time that on June 7 the presidential aircraft used the airport in Chișinău on its way to London, calling it a change of airport for the Ukrainian head of state's foreign trips. Európska pravda ↗

Kyiv gave no official explanation. Moldovan media noted that the change came at a time of tension between Kyiv and Warsaw, while pointing out themselves that the reason is unconfirmed. UNIMEDIA ↗

The difference between the two airports, however, is one of security. Rzeszów lies inside NATO and under its air defense, while Moldova is not in the alliance and has no shared airspace protection. When the aircraft flew through its territory on Tuesday, fighter jets scrambled only after it had crossed into Romania, and these were two Spanish F-18s from the Mihail Kogălniceanu base. Pro TV ↗

Police found metal balls in the crater

What exactly flew over Moldova was clarified on Wednesday morning by Moldovan police. At the impact site near the village of Mihăilenii Vechi in Rîșcani district, experts from the explosive ordnance disposal unit found fragments of a turbojet-powered device with characteristics similar to the Geran type — that is, the Russian version of the Iranian Shahed. NewsMaker ↗

The second finding is more significant. Metal balls were found in the crater, which, according to preliminary police findings, means the device was carrying an explosive payload and was therefore not a decoy without a warhead of the kind Russia sends in waves alongside live devices. The exact weight of the payload and the type of device are still being determined by authorities. NewsMaker ↗

The turbojet propulsion is precisely why such devices trouble countries outside the war as well. The Institute for the Study of War writes that with faster drones, Russia is shortening the time neighboring countries have to identify a target and react, and that Moscow can benefit from such incidents precisely because they force neighboring states to act quickly. The institute itself also adds that it cannot determine whether individual overflights are intentional. Pro TV ↗ BBC added on Thursday why this type of device is a problem for Ukraine itself as well: Russia deploys them daily, and they outpace Ukrainian air defense, which is built for slower propeller-driven drones. (BBC News ↗)

The bad night Zelenskyy talked about

Støre, in the same interview, also repeated what the president had told him about the previous night. "I asked how the night had been, and he said it hadn't been a good night, because he'd sat by the phone receiving reports on where missiles had landed," the prime minister said. NRK ↗

During that same night, Russian drones struck the Tudora-Starokazacie border crossing on the Ukrainian side of the border with Moldova. According to Odesa Oblast governor Oleh Kiper, two people were killed there and three others injured. President Maia Sandu condemned the attack, and Zelenskyy wrote that the international response to such attacks is too weak. The Kyiv Independent ↗ On Thursday morning, Moldova's foreign ministry added that Russia had claimed the attack and called it deliberate, justifying it with claims from Russian state media that weapons are transported into Ukraine via Tudora-Starokazacie. The ministry rejected this as unsubstantiated: according to it, no weapons pass into Ukraine through Moldovan territory, neither via this crossing nor any other, and it is families, children, mothers and elderly people who pass through there. "An attempt to justify killing civilians with false claims is cynical and unacceptable," the ministry said. (Ziarul de Gardă ↗)

What remains unconfirmed

The entire claim about a drone near the presidential plane rests so far on a single line of information. According to Stoltenberg, it was brought to the Norwegian side by Zelenskyy himself; Støre did not state the origin of his information, and no one has independently corroborated the event. Neither Chișinău nor Kyiv had commented by Wednesday evening, and the prime minister's own office used the most cautious wording. Aftenposten ↗

It is also not clear whether it was the same aircraft that Moldova tracked on Tuesday afternoon. Authorities announced one overflight and broke it down minute by minute, but did not name the individual flights involved. The coincidence of day and country alone is not enough to identify the two events as one. Realitatea ↗

Also relevant is the setting in which the statement was made. Besides the funeral, Zelenskyy flew to Oslo to discuss air defense, the need for interceptors, and the Freyja program, through which Ukraine wants to build, together with nine European countries, a cheaper substitute for the American Patriot. Norway is one of the participants. The Kyiv Independent ↗ From Oslo, Zelenskyy continued straight on: on Thursday he arrived for a three-day visit to Canada, where he is to hold talks on defense and support, and en route he also met with Iceland's foreign minister — the topic being strengthening air defense and protecting energy infrastructure. (Censor.NET ↗, Ukrajinská pravda ↗)

Ilustračná fotka: terminál medzinárodného letiska v Kišiňove, autor Simiprof, Wikimedia Commons, licencia CC BY-SA 4.0.

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