On the night of 19 to 20 August a drone entered Romanian airspace and the air force put up aircraft to track it. European Pravda reports that it crossed about 13 kilometres east of Galați and came down at 3.24 in the morning in an uninhabited area some four kilometres north-east of the village of Grindu, in Tulcea County. A drone entered Moldovan airspace the same night. The Moldovan defence ministry said it detected and tracked the object at 3.16 and that six minutes later, at 3.22, it left towards Ukraine in the direction of the village of Etulia. It had come in near Volboca — Cotlovina since 1948 — in the Reni hromada of Izmail district, Odesa region. First reports took it for a Shahed. Poland put military aircraft up the same night but confirmed no violation of its airspace.
Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X that Russia had again violated Moldovan and Romanian airspace and that a Ukrainian-Moldovan border crossing had been targeted. He said he would keep coordinating closely with his Moldovan and Romanian counterparts, Mihai Popșoi and Oana Țoiu, and would raise the matter at the coming trilateral summit in Odesa. Russia, he said, is testing the resolve of NATO and its partners more and more. After a large Russian air attack he asked Ukraine's partners for interceptor missiles and tighter sanctions.
Four days earlier, on the morning of 16 August, a drone that crossed in from the Moldovan side about 24 kilometres north of Galați was shot down, the Romanian defence ministry said. A Spanish air force F-18 flying NATO enhanced air policing out of Mihail Kogălniceanu air base brought it down in coordination with the Romanian command centre. It was the fourth Russian drone downed over Romanian territory. The Moldovan defence ministry identified that aircraft as a Shahed 138 — a Geran-2 — and said it had come from Cotlovina in Ukraine's Reni area, passed the village of Etulia in Gagauzia, and left Moldovan airspace at 4.49 through Slobozia Mare in Cahul district. Drone debris was found the same day on the Black Sea shore and in the water near the Neptun Alpha platform, and one intact drone carrying no explosive was recovered a kilometre and a half from the beach. In July, fighters had shot down three drones in the space of three days.
Moldova has recorded three airspace events in nine days. Moldovan police said that on 18 August an unidentified flying object exploded in a maize field outside Talmaza, in the country's south-east, tearing a crater about two metres across and half a metre deep. The blast wave spread over an area of roughly 45 by 20 metres. Nobody was hurt. Investigators recovered fragments of a fibreglass airframe, damaged electronics and a turbojet engine. The police said the parts resembled those of a jet-propelled missile-drone but did not identify the aircraft; the outlet Militarnyi noted that the same engine is used in the Banderol. The authorities closed central airspace for fifteen minutes before the object disappeared from radar near Talmaza. Moldova's foreign ministry called it a serious violation of its sovereignty and a threat to public safety.
Why it is on the board
Third on Google Trends in France, in the band above two hundred searches, with video on it running at 1,048 views an hour. Note where that leaves us: the lens is French, but nothing here was reported by a French outlet. What our board can say is that this is what France was searching for and watching — what happened is told by the Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian press.
확인: European Pravda · Ukrainska Pravda (같은 발행사) · Euromaidan Press · Romania Insider · La Libre