Two Russian Banderol (S8000) cruise missiles entered Moldova’s airspace on Wednesday morning. This was reported by Moldova’s defence ministry, as the news outlet pravda.com.ua reports. According to this, the first missile crossed the state border at 06:04 from the village of Yasky in the Odesa region towards the village of Tudora in the Ștefan Vodă district and left Moldovan airspace at 06:09 towards the village of Starokozache in the Odesa region. The second missile crossed the border at 06:06 near the village of Lymanske in the Odesa region towards the village of Pervomaisk in the Transnistrian segment and left the airspace at 06:10 towards the village of Rozdilna, also in the Odesa region. The air operations centre is continuing to monitor the airspace, in coordination with the relevant authorities and partners.
According to the report, the missiles flew in connection with Russia’s large-scale attacks on Ukraine. In the night to Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian air force, the Russian army fired an Iskander-M missile and 162 attack drones at Ukraine, 135 of which were shot down, as BBC News Ukraine reports. Among the targets hit was a shopping centre in Kropyvnytskyi; in the Vinnytsia region, two people died in an attack on a civilian enterprise in Ladyzhyn, as the head of the regional military administration, Nataliia Zabolotna, announced. In the Kyiv region, according to the military administration, one person was killed and nine others injured, including a child.
In Moldova, a drone loaded with explosives had previously come down in the village of Chishtynytsia, 100 metres from a residential building. The Moldovan foreign ministry then announced that it would declare a member of the Russian embassy in Chișinău a persona non grata. President Maia Sandu stressed that the war led by Russia continues to endanger the people of Moldova. On Tuesday, the Moldovan ambassador Lilian Darii was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry, where a firm protest was conveyed to her over the expulsion of a member of the Russian embassy in Chișinău that Moldova had already pronounced on 23 October.
